tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-98116962020-06-01T09:29:53.693+00:00Phil on FilmPhilip Concannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16705364309920890969noreply@blogger.comBlogger1102125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9811696.post-80831393794922690292020-05-04T22:24:00.004+00:002020-05-04T22:24:30.296+00:00The Death and Life of John F. Donovan<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1tN-ym0vuHY/XrCVIoIKNmI/AAAAAAAAJas/W06rcHQNMxAm8nLKkoY_Prgpm0cqR9P6gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/death-life-john-f-donovan-kit-harington2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="795" data-original-width="1200" height="265" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1tN-ym0vuHY/XrCVIoIKNmI/AAAAAAAAJas/W06rcHQNMxAm8nLKkoY_Prgpm0cqR9P6gCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/death-life-john-f-donovan-kit-harington2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Xavier Dolan’s name appears a lot in the opening credits of <i>The Death and Life of John F. Donovan</i>. He’s noted as one of the costume designers, a co-editor, co-writer, co-producer and – in case you didn’t get the message – the words “directed by Xavier Dolan” appear twice. I’ve long admired the way Dolan throws so much of himself into his work, but as I watched this film I wondered if he should have delegated more often to focus on the already considerable task of directing this picture, because if <i>The Death and Life of John F. Donavan</i> has one defining trait, it’s a chronic lack of focus.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Before those opening credits have even begun, we’ve been introduced to the three narrative threads that Dolan will spend the next two hours struggling to pull together. In New York in 2006, Donovan (the fatally uncharismatic Kit Harrington) is a young actor on the rise. The star of a hit TV show and on the verge of being cast in Disney’s new superhero movie ("These kinds of movies are popular right now, but it won't last, will it?" someone asks), he’s idolised from afar by 10 year-old Rupert (Jacob Tremblay). Living in Harrow with his mother (Natalie Portman) and the target of school bullies, Rupert takes refuge in his secret epistolary correspondence with Donovan, an unlikely friendship that began when the star unexpectedly replied to one of his fan letters and that has now been ongoing for five years.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We never learn why Donovan felt the urge to respond to this particular child, or why he felt compelled to maintain the correspondence for five years and something in the region of a hundred letters. We understand that he feels trapped and unhappy, a closeted actor forced to live a public lie in a sham heterosexual relationship, but what did he get out of sharing his thoughts and feeling with this young stranger? We don’t know, and while the essential unknowability of the celebrities we revere is partly the film’s point, the fact that we don’t hear anything from these letters or see him even acknowledge their existence in his life until the very end of the film makes it feel like a crucial element of the text – something that could have given us a sense of his perspective and inner life – is absent. Without this tangible connective tissue to link Rupert and Donovan together, Dolan relies heavily on the adult Rupert (Ben Schnetzer) to fill in the gaps. He is promoting a memoir built around their relationship and is sitting down for an interview with a hardnosed reporter (Thandie Newton) who is accustomed to covering stories with more gravity and rolls her eyes at his "mishaps from the first world." She gradually begins to soften and empathise with him over the course of his narration, but as Dolan cuts back-and-forth between this conversation, set in 2017, and the two halves of his 2006 story, he can’t settle on the right rhythm.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Dolan has always been a director who favours direct emotions and blunt melodrama, but the big moments here – like Harington’s embarrassing on-set meltdown – can feel like they’re blowing up in a vacuum rather than emerging organically from the film’s steadily rising emotional temperature. Dolan is on much firmer ground when he focuses on difficult mother-son relationships, the theme that has been the cornerstone of all his work, with Natalie Portman and Susan Sarandon offering committed performances as Rupert and Donovan’s mothers respectively, but even here his usual perception and wit has failed him. Having watched scene after scene of Rupert yelling at his mother, the revelation of his school essay hailing her as his hero – which leads to a tearful slow-motion reunion in the rain – feels mawkish, cheap and entirely false.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>The Death and Life of John F. Donovan</i> is the first time Dolan the screenwriter has really failed Dolan the director, but perhaps it’s simply the end result of a filmmaker failing to fully get to grips with his most ambitious project and struggling to make amends in the edit. The film’s choppy editing patterns, truncated arcs and abrupt emotional swings (not to mention Michael Gambon’s bewildering last-minute cameo) all suggest a torturous post-production, as does Gabriel Yared’s score, which is slathered onto the picture like superglue, holding the rickety construction together. The thing is, there are glimmers of the film it could have been; thrilling flashes of Dolan’s directorial brio, aided by André Turpin’s atmospheric 35mm cinematography, and his love of actors, giving them moments to shine that the great ones – like Kathy Bates – relish running with. Ultimately, this feels like a film that he needed to make and get past, and in fact he already has, with his subsequent picture&nbsp;<i>Matthias &amp; Maxime</i> boasting some of his best work on both sides of the camera. Xavier Dolan’s prolific, swing-for-the-fences approach to filmmaking is always liable to produce a mixed bag of triumphs and disasters, but no matter how many times he goes on to falter in his career, <i>The Death and Life of John F. Donovan</i> will likely stand as his most fascinating and perplexing failure.</span>Philip Concannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072326458695080828noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9811696.post-48512678033690507632020-04-20T22:19:00.001+00:002020-04-20T22:20:01.898+00:00Lockdown Viewing - April 13th to 19th<span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>Bogus (Norman Jewison, 1996)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2umSYkC2uQ0/Xp4bEIwxvdI/AAAAAAAAJXM/YKEHSAl9qxIQu0uKKfM84Z3H4e3ZB1JXgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Bogus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2umSYkC2uQ0/Xp4bEIwxvdI/AAAAAAAAJXM/YKEHSAl9qxIQu0uKKfM84Z3H4e3ZB1JXgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Bogus.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">I was excited by the concept of Gérard Depardieu appearing out of the blue to be a child’s imaginary friend. I imagined all sorts of crazy antics – the film in my mind was entitled </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Drop Dead Ged</i><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"> – but </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Bogus</i><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"> seems bafflingly unwilling to explore any of the comic potential this film throws up. Depardieu’s Bogus is brought to life in an airplane toilet by the grief-stricken Albert (Haley Joel Osment), who is on his way to live with his late mother’s foster sister, whom he had never met. Harriet is played by Whoopi Goldberg, who wrings a few laughs out of her character’s puzzlement over this weird kid and his invisible friend suddenly living in her house, but the filmmakers seem content to have Bogus standing on the sidelines whispering words of wisdom to the boy instead of doing anything interesting or fun. He keeps telling Albert to be nicer to Harriet, to be patient with her, to give her a hug, etc. and all the life just drains out of the picture. There are a few fantasy sequences, like Bogus and Albert concocting an ice cream parlour out of thin air, but the attempts at spontaneous joviality feel even more forced than the hackneyed melodrama at the film’s heart. </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Bogus</i><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"> was written by Alvin Sargent and directed by Norman Jewison, and they push it for treacly sentimentality, losing their grip on the film completely when Harriet gains the ability to see Bogus and then – for some inexplicable reason – does an Astaire and Rogers-style dance number with him. Everything about </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Bogus</i><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"> feels, well, bogus, especially the final scene, in which Depardieu turns to the camera, ensuring us that he was off to perform more magical adventures for some unhappy souls elsewhere. Frankly, the actor looks like he’d rather be anywhere else.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>The Family Jewels (Jerry Lewis, 1965)</b><span style="font-weight: bold;">&nbsp;</span><b></b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HeC8U16OsHE/XpzXUzOnQXI/AAAAAAAAJW0/oHESu1mKBdoG72CZntvPLJX1j6eJUfJRACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/TheFamilyJewels2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="867" data-original-width="1543" height="223" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HeC8U16OsHE/XpzXUzOnQXI/AAAAAAAAJW0/oHESu1mKBdoG72CZntvPLJX1j6eJUfJRACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/TheFamilyJewels2.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Your reaction to </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Family Jewels</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> will depend entirely on your reaction to Jerry Lewis. If you’re even slightly resistant to his charms, </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Family Jewels</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> will probably be close to unbearable, as he appears in seven different guises as a series of increasingly eccentric characters, but I love watching Lewis and I loved this picture. Six of the seven characters are uncles to an orphaned heiress (10 year-old Donna Butterworth), and she has to choose one of them as her legal guardian. There are echoes of Lewis’s other work in some of these creations. His clumsy photographer recalls </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Nutty Professor</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, while his clown character recycles the one he played in </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">3-Ring Circus</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, although the darkness of this character also perhaps foreshadows </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Day the Clown Cried</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">. </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Family Jewels</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">’ plot is thin and largely irrelevant (there’s never any doubt that the kid will instead choose Willard, the family chauffer, also played by Lewis) but it does allow him to string together a series of extended skits as his various bizarre uncles each bring a different kind of chaos to the picture. An aged sea captain recalls a bomb disposal that is presented as a silent bit of slapstick; a pilot somehow conspires to get left on the runway as his plane takes off; a detective on the hunt of his kidnapped niece gets distracted by a pool hall and dazzles us with the trick shots Lewis learned from Minnesota Fats. There are also cherishable visual gags dotted throughout the film, like the way a whole row of books falls from a shelf in a perfect pattern when Lewis removes just one of them, or the deep groove he wears into the ground as he anxiously paces. Lewis’s timing and craftmanship on both sides of the camera is impeccable, and </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Family Jewels</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> frequently had me cackling on my sofa.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>The Outrage (Martin Ritt, 1964)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--Sj73mEfBF4/XpzJJNHHxrI/AAAAAAAAJWg/ZooEpZy4JSsdpfys8uQ7Mm8axfsR-Ha2gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/The%2BOutrage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="897" data-original-width="1118" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--Sj73mEfBF4/XpzJJNHHxrI/AAAAAAAAJWg/ZooEpZy4JSsdpfys8uQ7Mm8axfsR-Ha2gCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/The%2BOutrage.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">With films like </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Hustler</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Sweet Bird of Youth</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> and </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Hud </i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">already under his belt, Paul Newman was riding high as he approached the mid-1960s and surely had his pick of projects, so what on earth prompted him to sign on for </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Outrage</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">? I guess he was tight with Martin Ritt – this was their fifth picture together in six years – but he’s all wrong for the part of a Mexican bandit, both in the way he looks and the broad way he chooses to play the role, which verges on caricature. </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Outrage</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> is a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Rashomon</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, with Newman’s Carrasco on trial for the murder of a man (Laurence Harvey) and the rape of his wife (Claire Bloom). Watching Newman’s bandito face off against Bloom’s southern belle gets more tiresome with each flashback; Harvey spends most of these scenes gagged and tied to a tree, and he comes off best in comparison. I kept thinking that something about </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Outrage</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> felt strangely stiff and stagebound, and it was only afterwards that I discovered the screenplay was by Michael Kanin, who adapted Rashomon for the stage with his wife Fay in 1959. </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Outrage </i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">does have</span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">&nbsp;</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">its moments, but they tend to occur in the framing device rather than the flashbacks, which benefits from a terrific performance by Edward G. Robinson as a cheerfully cynical snake oil salesman who gets the film’s best lines: “Why, some of my best friends are corpses... they’re the only ones I can trust. Oh, sure, they stink a little but no more than a few alive ones that I know.” His turn is one of the film’s saving graces, with another being the vivid cinematography by the great James Wong Howe. His work is one of the few areas where Ritt’s film gives Kurosawa a run for his money.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>Split Image (Ted Kotcheff, 1982)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AkScPs5MSuE/XpuSkhVIqFI/AAAAAAAAJWU/zj_OW8YedVQgP8ICqYuWgsEYt-MqGXyMQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Split%2BImage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1200" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AkScPs5MSuE/XpuSkhVIqFI/AAAAAAAAJWU/zj_OW8YedVQgP8ICqYuWgsEYt-MqGXyMQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Split%2BImage.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Released within a few weeks of <i>First Blood</i>, the <i>other</i> 1982 collaboration between Brian Dennehy and Ted Kotcheff is an uneven but very compelling drama about a young man (Michael O’Keefe) who cuts ties with his family when he is drawn into a religious cult. Dennehy plays Danny’s father, a wealthy and flippant character suddenly rendered utterly powerless, and I thought we were being set up for a battle between him and cult leader Neil Kirklander (a malevolently grinning Peter Fonda) over the boy’s soul, but that’s not quite how it plays out. The wild card is Charles Pratt, an obsessive deprogrammer who hates Kirklander with a passion and has dedicated himself to bringing down his operation; I guess you could call him the film’s hero, except for the fact that he’s played by James Woods in one of the most hilariously scummy performances imaginable. “You know what I see college as? One big fuck farm” he tells a colleague as they wait for one of their targets to show, and he seems to take real glee in tormenting and the ex-cult kids as he beats Kirklander’s influence out of them. Woods invests <i>Split Image</i> with a prickly energy whenever he is on screen, but while this is a film with some great moments, it doesn’t quite come together into great film. O’Keefe’s journey from skeptical outsider to true believer feels a bit sketchy and underwritten, with&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">the filmmakers relying too heavily on Fonda’s oily charisma to sell </span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">the cult rather than fleshing out its specifics. It’s perhaps easy to see why <i>Split Image</i> has slipped into obscurity, but there are some fine performances to discover here and the film is generally absorbing and unnerving, at least until the disappointingly pat ending.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>We're No Angels (Neil Jordan, 1989)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j5X-zsRXekY/Xp4faJ3Jq2I/AAAAAAAAJXU/mc1pGKKpDV4VR2eMxmBmyPTfh0U2PC6XgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/We%2527re%2BNo%2BAngels.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j5X-zsRXekY/Xp4faJ3Jq2I/AAAAAAAAJXU/mc1pGKKpDV4VR2eMxmBmyPTfh0U2PC6XgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/We%2527re%2BNo%2BAngels.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">We’re No Angels</i><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"> has a hell of a pedigree. David Mamet wrote the screenplay, Neil Jordan directed it, and it stars Robert De Niro and Sean Penn. Most people would walk into a movie boasting those names with high expectations, but fewer would expect to sit down and watch a wacky screwball caper. Something about We’re No Angels feels off from the start, and it never really finds its groove. The opening sequence in a grim 1930s prison is spectacularly staged, but the scale and darkness of the movie overwhelms the comedy. The idea of two cons disguising themselves as men of the cloth in order to escape the law is a comedy standard, but Mamet and Jordan seem more drawn to the tension and danger inherent in their repeatedly frustrated attempts to cross the border into Canada than they are in mining laughs. Penn and De Niro work hard to lift the movie, but only Penn occasionally succeeds, with an appealingly guileless performance that works particularly well when his character is forced to improvise a sermon on the spot, and he plays well with John C. Reilly, who has a funny recurring role as a young monk who is absolutely in awe of these visiting clerics, hanging on their every word as if God himself was speaking. De Niro, however, is a disaster. The role gives him so little to play he resorts to mugging like crazy, and there’s hardly a scene in the film that isn’t marred by him frantically pulling faces. Coming just a year after </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Midnight Run</i><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">, it’s a painful lesson in what can happens when a serious actor actively tries to be funny instead of just playing the scene and letting the humour flow naturally.</span>Philip Concannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072326458695080828noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9811696.post-46948195157931572562020-04-13T19:17:00.000+00:002020-04-14T06:29:54.233+00:00Lockdown Viewing - April 6th to 12th<span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>Big Trouble (John Cassavetes, 1986)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5dFw0KKRjbo/XpOBGxCbSoI/AAAAAAAAJRw/mF8QHchLA0sow6Qb9d6pO8pSEBBXKLtcwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/MV5BNDM3MThmNjQtMzY5YS00MDY5LTkyZTAtYmYwYjRmZWE5Mjk2XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMDgyNjA5MA%2540%2540._V1_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="1000" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5dFw0KKRjbo/XpOBGxCbSoI/AAAAAAAAJRw/mF8QHchLA0sow6Qb9d6pO8pSEBBXKLtcwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/MV5BNDM3MThmNjQtMzY5YS00MDY5LTkyZTAtYmYwYjRmZWE5Mjk2XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMDgyNjA5MA%2540%2540._V1_.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">“I’m embarrassed to have my name on it, and even more embarrassed that people will think it’s my final film,” John Cassavetes said of </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Big Trouble</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, a salvage operation that he was parachuted into when writer-director Andrew Bergman left mid-production. It’s hard to know who is primarily responsible for the end result – Bergman, Cassavetes or the producers who reportedly meddled along the way – but it’s a film that doesn’t display much evident personality in its filmmaking, and has a schizophrenic quality in its storytelling. The first half is essentially a beat-by-beat parody of </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Double Indemnity</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, with Alan Arkin as the insurance man persuaded by a scheming femme fatale (Beverly D’Angelo) to get rid of her husband (Peter Falk) and split the payday. Once the deed has been done, however, the film spins off in a variety of directions, incorporating a faked death, a kidnapping, an attempted heist and an encounter with terrorists. A lot of </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Big Trouble</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> doesn’t work or even make a great deal of sense, but no film starring Peter Falk and Alan Arkin is ever going to be a complete write-off, and this one is often very funny. The dynamic the two leads share is similar to the one at the heart of </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The In-Laws</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> (also scripted by Bergman) and Arkin gets so much comic mileage out of simply trying to control the pitch of his voice as his anxiety overwhelms him or – in the film’s funniest moment – delivering a spit-take for the ages after tasting Falk’s sardine liqueur. </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Big Trouble</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> may be regarded as an ignominious and anonymous end to a great director’s career, but if you judge it against the standards of the average Hollywood comedy rather than Cassavetes’ own work, it doesn’t look so bad. There is one interesting side note to this film’s troubled production: before shooting began Columbia Pictures had to seek permission from Universal to use the plot of </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Double Indemnity</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, and Universal agreed in exchange for the rights to a project that had been sitting on the shelf at Columbia. That film was </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Back to the Future</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, which had already become a monster hit by the time </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Big Trouble</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> finally hobbled into cinemas.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>The Brown Bunny (Vincent Gallo, 2003)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-szuIBb6o9FU/XpR7erVCsmI/AAAAAAAAJR8/rdZeGcNq5mMFHAMPLUnj_Cbnf6prWJy5QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/the-brown-bunny-2003-350.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1192" height="241" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-szuIBb6o9FU/XpR7erVCsmI/AAAAAAAAJR8/rdZeGcNq5mMFHAMPLUnj_Cbnf6prWJy5QCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/the-brown-bunny-2003-350.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Given all the brouhaha that surrounded its release – the uproar at Cannes, the feud with Ebert, the fuss over a single scene – it’s strange to look at <i>The Brown Bunny</i> now and see how delicate, wistful and introspective it is. It's hardly a film that merited such a noisy introduction to the world. I don’t think it’s as strong a film as Gallo’s directorial debut Buffalo ’66, but I still like it a lot. The film feels of a piece with other minimalist films of that era, such as Gus Van Sant’s <i>Gerry </i>or Bruno Dumont’s <i>Twentynine Palms</i>, while also harkening back to pictures like <i>Zabriskie Point</i> and <i>Two Lane Blacktop</i>, as Gallo drives across the United States and occasionally stops to have an awkward conversation with somebody. It’s clear that he’s a lonely individual haunted by something, and in search of some kind of reconciliation with Daisy (</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Chloë Sevigny)</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, a woman from his past, but the nature of their relationship isn’t clarified until the very last scene, which is the only scene in the film anyone talks about. The meeting between Gallo and Sevigny is alternately uncomfortable, tender, angry and sad, and it acts as a culmination to everything that has come before it. Gallo has a gift for finding piercing and truthful moments in a scene that appears to be meandering, and he does that a number of times throughout <i>The Brown Bunny</i>, most notably in a wonderfully unexpected and intimate encounter with Cheryl Tiegs. <i>The Brown Bunny</i>’s 16mm images are evocative and atmospheric, and the film has an entrancing rhythm. I wonder if we’ll ever get to see another film from Vincent Gallo? I wonder if he’ll ever let us see his 2010 film <i>Promises Written in Water</i>? I dearly hope the answer to both of those questions is yes.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>The First Men in the Moon (Nathan Juran, 1964)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dcqLYHN_ymw/XpS5W9wKKkI/AAAAAAAAJSY/jAEiszVdbQ8VnGi4xy60ORMV53NVbGjXgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Annotation%2B2020-04-13%2B201047.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="802" data-original-width="1147" height="278" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dcqLYHN_ymw/XpS5W9wKKkI/AAAAAAAAJSY/jAEiszVdbQ8VnGi4xy60ORMV53NVbGjXgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Annotation%2B2020-04-13%2B201047.png" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Five years before Neil Armstrong walked on the lunar surface, this film imagined a United Nations mission successfully landing on the moon only to find that somebody had beaten them to it. The discovery of an old Union Jack flag and a note claiming the moon for Queen Victoria leads them to the aged Arnold Bedford (Edward Judd), who recounts the journey that he took to the moon way back in 1899. </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The First Men in the Moon</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">&nbsp;is an adaptation of an H. G. Wells novel, and it’s very distinctly a film of two halves. The first half of the picture has a manic screwball energy, being dominated by Lionel Jeffries as Cavor, the eccentric scientist whose gravity-defying substance will lift their craft into space. Jeffries charges about the place causing explosions and shouting about geese, and while some of this is funny, it’s more often just loud and frenetic. It takes a surprisingly long time for Bedford, Cavor and Bedford’s fiancé Kate (Martha Hyer) to achieve lift-off, and it’s something of a relief when they do, but that relief eventually hardens into disappointment during the underwhelming moon-set section of the film, where Nathan Juran’s direction is too sluggish and workmanlike to generate any real sense of danger or excitement. This is a very handsome film to look at, though. John Blezard’s art direction is impressive, both inside the spacecraft and within the tunnels of the moon, but the real star of the movie is undoubtedly Ray Harryhausen. He creates some giant worm-like creatures for our heroes to evade, but I was particularly fond of the aliens’ x-ray machine, that reduced the captured Martha Hyer to an angrily gesticulating skeleton.</span><br /><div><br /></div><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">My First Film (Zia Anger, 2019)</b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4d5MzL7HLiY/XpSxQqUOkXI/AAAAAAAAJSM/WXPRksNy1GY5EFr70MokNeHtROQ9mEDLgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/C3_Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-10.37.21-PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="698" data-original-width="1240" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4d5MzL7HLiY/XpSxQqUOkXI/AAAAAAAAJSM/WXPRksNy1GY5EFr70MokNeHtROQ9mEDLgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/C3_Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-10.37.21-PM.png" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">One of the most depressing rituals that has grown familiar over the past two months has been the deletion of various eagerly-anticipated events from my diary, as the Coronavirus pandemic forced the closure of cinemas, theatres and art galleries. An early casualty of this was Zia Anger’s live presentation of </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">My First Film</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> at the ICA, which I was supposed to see at the end of March, but fortunately Anger has found a way to give people an approximation of that experience. She is presenting live online shows for around 60-75 people at a time, and being part of one of those audiences was a very special experience. The first film that Anger is referring to was called </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Always All Ways, Anne Marie</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, a feature she made in 2012 with friends and relatives on a crowdfunded budget of $22,000. Once completed, the film was rejected by every festival it was submitted to and was never seen by an audience. In </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">My First Film</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, Anger shares bits and pieces of that film with us, presenting it on the left hand side of her desktop while typing her thoughts in a text box on the right hand side of the screen. Anger is honest and philosophical about both the film’s failings and her own, and there is something incredibly intimate about the spontaneous manner in which </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">My First Film</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> plays out, watching her thoughts appear on screen as she types them out, with her often going back to correct or revise them and sometimes responding to comments made by viewers as she goes. I admired her authenticity and imagination, and by the end of the film I was very moved by a shared experience that seemed to work as a cathartic and emotional experience for Anger too. I hope she can return to London to present </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">My First Film</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> live one day. If she does, I’ll be there.</span><br /><div><br /></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>The Rainmaker (Francis Ford Coppola, 1997)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1HsAqpO4ppI/Xo2t_Po4TjI/AAAAAAAAJOw/1gff2FYrRgw6YlPfmZXy-BcOv9hx5PrSACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/image-w1280-2_orig.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1HsAqpO4ppI/Xo2t_Po4TjI/AAAAAAAAJOw/1gff2FYrRgw6YlPfmZXy-BcOv9hx5PrSACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/image-w1280-2_orig.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Rainmake</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">r hits all the standard beats of a John Grisham thriller. An idealistic young lawyer is taking on a case that’s bigger than him. He appears in over his head against the high-powered legal team he’s up against, but after some canny legal wrangling, some shouts of "Objection!" and a few last-minute revelations of evidence, he wins the case and gets the girl. These films always adhere to a sturdy and familiar template, so what matters is how classy the filmmaking is and how many great character actors you can squeeze into the picture, and these are the factors that make </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Rainmaker</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> such a pleasure. This film may be among the most modest and anonymous of Coppola’s works, but his subtly intelligent direction elevates it. The way he frames certain figures, such as Mickey Rourke’s crooked lawyer and Dean Stockwell’s feckless judge, speaks volumes about their characters and the power dynamic inherent in those scenes. Rourke and Stockwell are just two of the wonderful roster of supporting players enlisted to prop up a committed but bland Matt Damon, whose romance with Claire Danes (trapped in a helpless abused wife subplot) is by far the worst thing in the picture. Jon Voight is the slick corporate lawyer who sold his soul years ago, Roy Scheider is the insurance company’s CEO, Mary Kay Place is the mother of a son who is slowly wasting away. Best of all is Danny DeVito as Damon’s opportunistic partner; constantly hustling and looking for an angle, he brings a vital bristling energy to the picture. </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Rainmaker</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> is a thoroughly engaging mainstream entertainment, but there’s also a real power in the way Coppola presents the dying young man (Johnny Whitworth) whose illness has instigated this case. Instead of just treating him as a plot point or a cheap emotional hook, Coppola recognises the tragedy of the situation, making us face these characters and their pain just as Voight and his cronies are forced to. "This is how the uninsured die," Damon says in his (Michael Sherr-scripted) voiceover. It’s an element of the film that still resonates more than two decades on.</span>Philip Concannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072326458695080828noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9811696.post-44276611768712543432020-04-06T21:31:00.003+00:002020-04-06T23:19:00.703+00:00Lockdown Viewing - March 30th to April 5th<span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>Anna Karenina (Joe Wright 2012)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bnG8uiNjJsU/XoudO8rObJI/AAAAAAAAJNI/KydRzLb9J7AfDek4qJzToL1R_gTG6xQRACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/04RAFFERTY1-superJumbo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bnG8uiNjJsU/XoudO8rObJI/AAAAAAAAJNI/KydRzLb9J7AfDek4qJzToL1R_gTG6xQRACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/04RAFFERTY1-superJumbo.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">I felt an inexplicable urge to watch Joe Wright's </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Anna Karenina</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> again recently. I'm not sure what I was expecting from it, as I hadn't really cared for it in 2012 and little of Wright's subsequent work had given me cause for reevaluation. It’s an enormously frustrating picture because I can admire much of what Wright is trying to do within the framework of his theatrical conceit, and there are times when he pulls off a virtuoso camera move or a complex piece of choreography that deserve applause. Ultimately, however, that’s all </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Anna Karenina</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> amounts to. It’s a series of bold maneouvres and ambitious ideas that never coheres, and for a film determined to flow from one scene to the next – with scene transitions happening on the fly – it feels so disjointed. It was always likely to be a shallow and truncated adaptation, but Wright and Tom Stoppard never seem to have a grasp on the balance or pacing of the story, and both the primary and secondary narratives end up feeling underdeveloped. One of the key problems lies in the casting. The decision to cast Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Vronsky looks even more laughable now than it did then, and although she makes a fair stab at it, I think the title role was too much for Keira Knightley. The film’s real success stories lie in the supporting roles. Jude Law is marvelous as the dignified, wounded Karenin, and Alicia Vikander grabs her opportunity to light up the film every time she appears as Kitty. A star was obviously being born. I'd like to see her Anna Karenina some day.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>Getting Straight (Richard Rush, 1970)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xI1e2QlrRrU/XoudWg_5JcI/AAAAAAAAJNM/RsF2fttPaloRImbBEJLKREaBudwreowHwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/maxresdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xI1e2QlrRrU/XoudWg_5JcI/AAAAAAAAJNM/RsF2fttPaloRImbBEJLKREaBudwreowHwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/maxresdefault.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Getting Straight</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> is talk, talk, talk. The characters in Richard Rush’s film are constantly arguing, debating, monologuing and cracking wise. It might have all become too cacophonous to bear if it wasn’t for two key factors. First of all, the protagonist Harry Bailey – a sardonic Vietnam vet returning to college to secure his master’s degree – is played by prime-form Elliott Gould, who keeps us engaged no matter how arrogant, pompous and misogynistic his character can be. The second factor that keeps us hooked into the picture is Rush’s incredibly vibrant direction. Working with Laszlo Kovacs, he finds imaginative ways to frame every scene through his blocking, his use of architecture and, above all, through some spectacular rack focus work. Seriously, I can’t remember the last time I saw so many focus pulls in a single film; there must be a dozen in some of these shots. Emerging from the burnout, disillusionment and fog of the end of the ‘60s, </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Getting Straight</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> is a fascinating time capsule. I’m not sure if it all really works, and I found a lot of it unconvincing (especially Harry’s climactic explosion over </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Great Gatsby</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">) but it’s impossible to look away from this movie, and the ending has the same potent ‘burn it all down’ quality that characterises so many films of this era. </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Getting Straight</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">&nbsp;made over $13 million and was the 21st highest-grossing film of 1970, which is a remarkable thing to consider from today's point of view.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>Man Trouble (Bob Rafelson, 1992)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qV5BOUdfE5s/XoudjdhDpOI/AAAAAAAAJNU/sX3sbsR79EUQa_QloGj46HALchDukpS8wCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/1118full-man-trouble----------------------------------%25281992%2529-screenshot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="729" data-original-width="1118" height="260" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qV5BOUdfE5s/XoudjdhDpOI/AAAAAAAAJNU/sX3sbsR79EUQa_QloGj46HALchDukpS8wCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/1118full-man-trouble----------------------------------%25281992%2529-screenshot.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Hopes must have been sky-high for a film that reunited the director, screenwriter and star of F</span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">ive Easy Pieces</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, but there’s no getting away from the fact that </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Man Trouble</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> is a confounding mess. It’s not just the fact that it’s a bad movie, but it feels like three or four bad movies are happening at once. On one level the film is an attempt at an old-fashioned screwball romance, but stodgy pace and the lack of chemistry between Jack Nicholson and Ellen Barkin kill its chances of ever getting off the ground. Barkin appears to have been directed to flip into hysterics at the slightest provocation, while Nicholson operates on autopilot. To be fair, the actors might just have been confused by the way their character dynamics seem to transform from one scene to the next, with the film adopting a different style and tone every ten minutes. I know I was confused. There’s a subplot about a serial axe murderer that doesn’t go anywhere, and an equally baffling detour in which Barkin’s sister Beverly D'Angelo is kidnapped and held in a psychiatric hospital because some powerful men want a tell-all transcript she’s writing, or something. If that wasn’t enough, there’s also a running gag about a horny dog that keeps trying to shag people. </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Man Trouble </i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">has a cracking cast - Harry Dean Stanton, Michael McKean, Saul Rubinek and Veronica Cartwright all make appearances – but nobody seems entirely sure what their role is supposed to be. A bewildering misfire.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>Movie Crazy (Clyde Bruckman, 1932)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DkBCyZX4uOk/XoudntEgHPI/AAAAAAAAJNc/zfINfbqllDwpFBGV9PG4hd_toN9FlcX2gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/4bccffc373938e598bc576eec24338bc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1227" data-original-width="1600" height="245" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DkBCyZX4uOk/XoudntEgHPI/AAAAAAAAJNc/zfINfbqllDwpFBGV9PG4hd_toN9FlcX2gCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/4bccffc373938e598bc576eec24338bc.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">This was Harold Lloyd’s first foray into talking pictures, and despite some occasional stiffness, it’s generally a very smooth transition. The film pokes fun at our bespectacled hero’s inappropriateness as a big screen leading man. He is a dreamer hoping to break into pictures, who gets his opportunity when a mix-up over his headshot leads to him being invited to the studio for a screen test. Lloyd does have some fun with sound effects – notably in the way the audio speeds up as his various screen tests are run through – but </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Movie Crazy</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> succeeds primarily because its best gags are inventive visual sequences that you could easily imagine him constructing in the silent era. He creates slapstick havoc when he stumbles into a production as soon as he arrives in Hollywood, and in the film’s comic highlight he accidentally wears a magician’s jacket to a party, looking increasingly bewildered as he pulls rabbits and doves from its hidden pockets. </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Movie Crazy</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> offers an amusing dual role to Constance Cummings, who toys with Harold’s emotions as both an actress and the character she’s playing in a film; Harold isn’t aware that they’re the same woman, and he fears he’s cheating on one with the other. But what really distinguishes the film is the elegant style that Lloyd and director Clyde Bruckman (a frequent collaborator with both Lloyd and Buster Keaton) bring to the film. Rather than being constrained by the newfangled recording techniques, they keep the camera mobile, incorporating a series of impressive tracking shots, notably the one that builds up to the spectacular climactic fight on the deck of a ship.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>Wife (Mikio Naruse, 1953)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lJ_MpLBzGT0/Xoud7CmAKNI/AAAAAAAAJNo/4Nc4cbxn-l8v61pewfEo-DqjS99ceGTlwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/MV5BMWE5Zjc3M2ItZjAyZC00Zjc1LThmODgtODIxN2JlYmFhZWI5XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjcxNjI4NTk%2540._V1_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="986" data-original-width="1280" height="307" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lJ_MpLBzGT0/Xoud7CmAKNI/AAAAAAAAJNo/4Nc4cbxn-l8v61pewfEo-DqjS99ceGTlwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/MV5BMWE5Zjc3M2ItZjAyZC00Zjc1LThmODgtODIxN2JlYmFhZWI5XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjcxNjI4NTk%2540._V1_.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">The stark title could stand for a number of Mikio Naruse films, but in its opening scenes, </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Wife </i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">gives equal weight to the inner thoughts of both partners in a failing marriage. Mihoko (Mieko Takamine) and Toichi (Ken Uehara) have been married ten years and whatever spark their relationship once had has long faded. Neither party seems able to address this directly, however, and instead they both sit in silent resentment, stewing in their private emotions. The actors find small, telling details in their interactions that accentuate their mutual dissatisfaction, and when Toichi is driven into the arms of a co-worker she is young, cultured and modern – she represents a sharp contrast with his wife. Naruse surrounds the central couple with vividly sketched and equally poignant portraits of marital discord – one woman despairs of her unemployed and often drunk husband; another is devastated by her husband’s relationship with a prostitute – and he brilliantly weaves in and out of these narratives to create a tapestry of sadness, frustration and lost hopes. </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Wife </i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">is structured to open and close with scenes that echo each other, emphasising the hopeless situation that these characters find themselves in. Mihoko might have won the victory over her young rival, in a beautifully acted confrontation, but she has only condemned herself to many more years in a loveless union that won’t make anybody happy.</span>Philip Concannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072326458695080828noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9811696.post-5598355990523858572020-03-30T14:32:00.003+00:002020-03-30T14:44:30.865+00:00Lockdown Viewing - March 23rd to 29th<span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">It has been more than two weeks since I last saw a film on the big screen (<i>The Godfather</i> on 35mm, not a bad way to bow out), and that’s probably the longest period I’ve endured without going to the cinema since… I started going to the cinema. These are strange times and I’ve felt very depressed and destabilised over the past couple of weeks. Going to cinemas, art galleries, theatres and watching football constitutes 90% of what I do outside of work, so having all of that suddenly ripped away from me is a loss that has taken some time to digest and recover from. In theory, one could see this as a whole lot of unexpected free time to take advantage of, but in practice I’ve felt too lost and restless to properly sit down and focus on reading or writing anything. Even the simple pleasure of going to a café for a couple of hours with a book, one of my key methods of relaxation, is no longer an option.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">But there’s no point wallowing in despair; after all, life isn’t going to get back to normal any time in the immediate future. I’m trying to be more disciplined and structured in how I fill my hours, to spend less time following the (never good) news and more time catching up with films that are either unseen by me or long overdue for a revisit. I thought it would help to share my brief thoughts on these films, and to maybe inspire you to seek them out for your own home viewing, so look out for an update every Monday for however long this situation will continue for.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">I hope everyone reading this is keeping safe and well.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>Apache Drums (Hugo Fregonese, 1951)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KGS78lljpXY/XoH90fcGjmI/AAAAAAAAJH0/1Ctp3Y8ojJYOyLdnSgPaiwc1EOzHdkLdgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/image-w1280%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KGS78lljpXY/XoH90fcGjmI/AAAAAAAAJH0/1Ctp3Y8ojJYOyLdnSgPaiwc1EOzHdkLdgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/image-w1280%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">This low-budget western is notable for being Val Lewton's last production. It lacks any major stars and takes place in a handful of locations, but it’s a surprisingly rich and moving film about prejudice, community and sacrifice. Stephen McNally is very good as the gambler banished from a small frontier town, only to become the town's saviour when he returns to warn them about a band of marauding Apaches heading their way. David Chandler’s concise screenplay film skilfully sets up a number of tensions in the first half of the film – primarily between McNally and upright stick-in-the-mud mayor Willard Parker – and these tensions are carried into the climactic siege, which dominates the last half-hour of this 76-minute film. Director Hugo Fregonese has a strong sense of composition and he builds tension beautifully, doing some sensational work in the siege itself, with quiet moments of dread being punctuated by flurries of action, as the warpaint-clad Indians leap out of the darkness. The stark and expressive lighting adds to the sense of claustrophobia and fear. An impressive piece of work all round.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (Robert Altman, 1988)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dXnPX94Xa8w/XoH9320NXHI/AAAAAAAAJH4/xuFGkUPClbEUAh54jQeWN1BtCsqBm0VyQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/image-w1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dXnPX94Xa8w/XoH9320NXHI/AAAAAAAAJH4/xuFGkUPClbEUAh54jQeWN1BtCsqBm0VyQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/image-w1280.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">I’ve seen and enjoyed almost all of the stage adaptations that Robert Altman directed during his wilderness years of the '80s. What’s so striking about these productions is that Altman doesn’t make any real attempt to open these films beyond their obvious stage origins. Instead, he turns them into cinematic through his imaginative use of the camera and his attention to his ensemble’s performances, and both of these attributes are on display in </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, a television film he directed in 1988. It has a terrific young cast: Jeff Daniels as the sailor accused of mutiny, Eric Bogosian as his reluctant defence counsel, Peter Gallagher as the prosecuting lawyer and Brad Davis as Queeg, the captain whose authority Daniels usurped. The play is essentially a series of long cross-examinations, but Altman never lets it settle into stasis; his camera is always prowling around the gymnasium in which this trial is taking place, looking for a fresh perspective. He sometimes slips away from the person speaking to rest on the faces of those listening, and he’ll allow background and foreground noise to intermingle, all of which pushes us to lean in and pick out key details. The actors relish the meaty monologues offered by Herman Wouk’s superb play, none more so than Brad Davis, whose crack-up in the second half is painful to watch but utterly riveting.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>Deconstructing Harry (Woody Allen, 1997)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ywDvye2MUio/XoH964nOylI/AAAAAAAAJH8/4zRu_BPcAes_hcjsaH79HyFsTBQ8bbcdgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/b9DBEbDikOV7r0gUTO4RRFYG9XO.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ywDvye2MUio/XoH964nOylI/AAAAAAAAJH8/4zRu_BPcAes_hcjsaH79HyFsTBQ8bbcdgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/b9DBEbDikOV7r0gUTO4RRFYG9XO.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Astonishingly bitter. It feels like Woody took every criticism that had been levelled at him and piled them all into one character, a novelist who exploits his real-life relationships in his art, habitually discarding those lovers once he's through with them and has moved on to a younger model. The film is edgy and frantic, all handheld camerawork and jagged cuts, and there's something disorienting right from the start in the way the classic Woody credits are repeatedly disrupted. He lets some of his actors off the leash in a tremendously enjoyable way, notably Judy Davis as a betrayed lover and Kirstie Alley as his ex-wife (I love the scene where&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Alley&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">berates him for fucking her patient, while the camera stays in her office with her latest patient nervously listening). There are also skits that feel like his short stories dropped into the middle of the main Philip Roth-like narrative, such as Tobey Maguire using a friend's apartment to hire a prostitute and then having to face Death, or Robin Williams as an actor literally going out of focus. All of this adds up to a strange, acidic brew, and I'm not sure it quite hangs together, but it's certainly one of the most fascinating entries from the post-scandal years, and it contains some very funny lines: "You have no values. With you it's all nihilism, cynicism, sarcasm, and orgasm." "In France I could run for office with that slogan and win!”</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>eXistenZ (David Cronenberg, 1990)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mS9dhg32ny0/XoH9-ZcNgHI/AAAAAAAAJIA/QC9HJl65GLozk1qVVJWwKCVAdahSMHh9wCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/exiztenz-1999-1108x0-c-default.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="831" data-original-width="1108" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mS9dhg32ny0/XoH9-ZcNgHI/AAAAAAAAJIA/QC9HJl65GLozk1qVVJWwKCVAdahSMHh9wCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/exiztenz-1999-1108x0-c-default.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">I don't think I'd seen this film until just after it first came out and I'd forgotten how much fun it is. Is it Cronenberg's funniest movie? He has so much fun with the sexual innuendo around the anus-like bio-ports, and Jude Law's panicky performance in the first half of the film is a hoot. It’s such a fleet and exciting picture too, zipping from one location to the next and blurring the real and the virtual until it’s impossible for us or the characters to tell them apart – the film’s closing line is inevitably, “Hey, tell me the truth. Are we still in the game?” The whole sequence in the Chinese restaurant in particular is brilliantly put together. I re-watched </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Videodrome </i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">at the tail end of last year and it really is remarkable how potent and prescient both of these movies feel, as they explore the notions of our constructed realities and how technology can warp and mediate our most personal relationships and intimate activities. Above all else, I just really responded to how fleshy and organic </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">eXistenZ </i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">feels, with the technological devices all appearing as extensions (eXtensionZ?) of our own biology. It has been six years since both </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Maps to the Stars</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> and his novel </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Consumed </i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">(which reminded me a little of </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">eXistenZ</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">) and I miss David Cronenberg very much.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>The Scout (Michael Ritchie, 1994)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JHVC36wtJrE/XoH-Bzvo4hI/AAAAAAAAJIE/e5LBgAY_o94JVwaIYwpibXDzqDedukfewCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/the-scout-1994-4724-screenshots-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="688" data-original-width="1280" height="215" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JHVC36wtJrE/XoH-Bzvo4hI/AAAAAAAAJIE/e5LBgAY_o94JVwaIYwpibXDzqDedukfewCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/the-scout-1994-4724-screenshots-2.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">A compromised and frustrating Michael Ritchie-directed baseball comedy from 1994, starring Albert Brooks as a New York Yankees scout banished to Mexico after too many of his prospects flop. In a tiny Mexican town, he discovers a young player (Brendan Fraser) who might be the greatest ever - he pitches at 100mph every time, and he clears the stadium with every swing of his bat. The early scenes of Brooks bumbling his way around Mexico and then bringing the childlike but volatile Fraser back to New York, are pretty funny, and for a while I thought this film might be better than its reputation suggested, particularly when Dianne Wiest showed up as Fraser's therapist. But it grows increasingly slack and tedious, getting bogged down in the Fraser character’s poorly defined mental issues. The laughs dry up and the (apparently studio-enforced) ending is just disastrous. It seems </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Scout</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> underwent a lot of rewrites during its two-decade development (originally Peter Falk and Jim Belushi were lined up to star in the late-70s), and each rewrite took it further away from the evocative Roger Angell New Yorker article that had originally inspired it.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>A Shock to the System (Jan Egleson, 1990)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EcKb52dNxeQ/XoH-FyyzKqI/AAAAAAAAJIM/C4zN-hTvkUEsZw9fvTA18GoB5Slmn-jDgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/d07301_7d22df26a3d44a3091c73217753dbd93_mv2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="748" data-original-width="1330" height="223" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EcKb52dNxeQ/XoH-FyyzKqI/AAAAAAAAJIM/C4zN-hTvkUEsZw9fvTA18GoB5Slmn-jDgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/d07301_7d22df26a3d44a3091c73217753dbd93_mv2.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Michael Caine stars as an ageing advertising executive passed over for promotion in favour of a younger man, and feeling himself increasingly sidelined and undermined at work and at home. His response, of course, is to start murdering his way to the top! <i>A Shock to the System</i> reminded me of Costa-Gavras's excellent Donald Westlake adaptation <i>The Axe</i>, which unfortunately never got released in the UK, and Caine is on prime form here as a character letting his innate nastiness gradually emerge, particularly as he begins to get away with his increasingly elaborate crimes and starts to see himself as untouchable. The film is directed with style and wit and boast a number of fine supporting performances, including Peter Riegert as Caine’s corporate rival, Elizabeth McGovern as his love interest and Will Patton as a dogged but ineffective detective. It might end up feeling a bit slight at the end of it all, but&nbsp;</span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A Shock to the System</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">&nbsp;is a very entertaining and tightly constructed 90 minutes.&nbsp;</span><br /><div><br /></div>Philip Concannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072326458695080828noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9811696.post-21641869184017149972020-03-08T17:18:00.001+00:002020-03-17T12:15:01.097+00:00The Great Buster: A Celebration - Preview and Q&A<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6R1mryekYPE/XmUowsZpZmI/AAAAAAAAIx8/6KOLwi0iO1U81izb977GPXSPDwyQdr8QgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Buster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1080" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6R1mryekYPE/XmUowsZpZmI/AAAAAAAAIx8/6KOLwi0iO1U81izb977GPXSPDwyQdr8QgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Buster.jpg" width="270" /></a></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">As some of you may already be aware, I'm rather fond of the films of Buster Keaton, so I've been looking forward to Peter Bogdanovich's new documentary <i>The Great Buster: A Celebration</i> for some time. I saw it recently and it's a very entertaining and touching tribute to this comic genius. The film is full of great clips - including some footage that I hadn't seen before - and it features contributions from a number of filmmakers, historians and fans. It offers some lovely nuggets of information and illuminating details for Keaton aficionados, and it is a perfect introduction for anyone coming to his work for the first time.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><i>The Great Buster: A Celebration</i> will be released in UK cinemas on March 20th, and it will have a preview screening at the Bertha Dochouse on March 18th. After the film, I'll be hosting a Q&amp;A with historian David MacLeod, the co-founder of Buster Keaton appreciation society The Blinking Buzzards, and author of the book <i>The Sound of Buster Keaton</i>.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">You can buy your tickets <a href="https://dochouse.org/cinema/screenings/great-buster-celebration-qa">here</a> and I hope you'll join us on the 18th to celebrate The Great Buster!</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>UPDATE: Due to the Coronavirus situation this event has now been cancelled, along with everything else. It has been an unbelievably depressing experience to receive one email after another announcing the closure of another cinema or gallery space, and I can only hope that these venues and their staff can survive the coming weeks without suffering too much hardship. The sooner we can get back to some kind of normality and get back to supporting our favourite cinemas and arts organisations, the better. Stay safe, everyone.</b></span>Philip Concannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072326458695080828noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9811696.post-52644284078777092112020-02-27T11:03:00.002+00:002020-02-27T12:34:00.461+00:00End of the Century<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nGZ9_cQt7uw/XlegGovQ9yI/AAAAAAAAItE/zQQxknwCTGEb9aFja1axnI7ddyIrrzJKQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/End%2Bof%2Bthe%2BCentury.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="1600" height="186" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nGZ9_cQt7uw/XlegGovQ9yI/AAAAAAAAItE/zQQxknwCTGEb9aFja1axnI7ddyIrrzJKQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/End%2Bof%2Bthe%2BCentury.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Argentine writer-director director Lucio Castro has chosen a familiar template for his debut feature <i>End of the Century</i>. Two strangers meet in a foreign land. They talk, they wander around the city, they tumble into bed and they try to figure out if this is the real thing or just a brief encounter. It's a template that works but can also use some freshening up, and Castro shakes it in a few interesting ways. First of all, Ocho (Juan Barberini) and Javi (Ramón Pujol) take care of the sex before sitting down for the getting-to-know-you phase, and it's during this post-coital conversation that they gradually realise they already do know each other, having met and had sex in the same city twenty years earlier.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">When this realisation kicks in it triggers a long flashback, in which we see Ocho arriving in Barcelona for the first time, but you'd be forgiven for initially thinking that we're being taken back two weeks rather than two decades. Castro doesn't make any attempt to de-age his middle-aged actors, and while this effect is disconcerting it effectively establishes <i>End of the Century</i> as a subjective memory piece, with Ocho placing himself inside his hazy recollection of the past. Would&nbsp; it really be so hazy, though? During this trip, Ocho first gave in to the homosexual stirrings inside him, first following a man into the woods to receive a nerve-wracking blowjob, before hooking up with Javi (also nominally straight and attached at this point) a few nights later. Is it convincing that Ocho would have forgotten these significant first gay experiences? Even when he finds Javi wearing the same KISS t-shirt twenty years on? A film like <i>End of the Century</i> needs an audience to buy into it, but too many of its details just didn't ring true.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">The t-shirt is one of the motifs that links past and present; we see Javi finding it in the street, presuming it has fallen from an overhead washing line, and proceeding to take it home and wear it. This is one of many echoes and ironies that Castro lays across the boundaries of his two timelines. In their youthful conversation, Ocho discusses his desire to have kids while Javi dismisses the idea, but it's Javi who ends up married with a child; when Ocho has his first sexual encounter with a man he immediately panics and fears that he has contracted AIDS, but twenty years on it is he who is happy to have sex without a condom. These connections are cute but they signify little, and Castro seems content to let them serve as character development instead of digging deeper. The two men have plenty of time to talk but their conversation is banal and the camera is too often static as it watches them. As I watched <i>End of the Century</i> I thought of films like <i>In the City of Sylvia</i> and <i>Certified Copy</i>, but those films had a sense of&nbsp;visual elegance – of the camera being in tune with the characters' rhythm – that's absent here. Bernat Mestres' cinematography in general feels rather listless.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Just when <i>End of the Century</i> starts to grow a little stagnant, Castro pulls his boldest manoeuvre, with a final third that falls somewhere between dream and reality. It feels reminiscent of the climax to&nbsp;<i>The Last Temptation of Christ</i> and it introduces a sense of the uncanny that elevates the film, but again I think it stops short of landing on something really resonant. There are some poignant reflections in <i>End of the Century</i> on time and memory, the choices we make and the countless paths not taken, but the whole film is so delicate and measured in its construction, and so determinedly quiet in its tonal register, it never cuts through the surface. For all of its formal audacity, Castro's film ends up feeling too neat, contained and self-satisfied. One unexpected side-effect of the film's unwaveringly understated approach is that an innocuous scene in which a character steps on a squeaky toy made the whole audience jump in unison&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">–</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">sadly, it was the only time the film provoked a genuine emotional reaction from me.</span>Philip Concannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072326458695080828noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9811696.post-7588727837196460412020-02-23T22:19:00.002+00:002020-02-25T10:39:58.110+00:00Cinema Round-Up - Midnight Family / The Public / Like a Boss<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x8BCYoOxOno/XlL3Gb7lUlI/AAAAAAAAIpw/O9TW9SHKvpIoE7G2OLvt-DnwOK4zPHRlACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/midnight-family-image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="934" data-original-width="1600" height="232" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x8BCYoOxOno/XlL3Gb7lUlI/AAAAAAAAIpw/O9TW9SHKvpIoE7G2OLvt-DnwOK4zPHRlACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/midnight-family-image.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">A new entry in the </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Fast and Furious</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> series will be crashing noisily into cinemas this summer, but will it offer anything to match the high-speed races between ambulances that Luke Lorentzen captured in </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Midnight Family</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">? The ambulances aren't racing towards the scene of an accident so they can assist each other; they're each trying to get there first, knowing that this is the only way they are going to get paid. </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Midnight Family</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> opens with a startling statistic, informing us that in Mexico City – population nine million – the state runs less than 45 ambulances. This has led to an industry of independent private ambulances springing up to fill the gaps, and one of these is run by the Ochoa family, with whom Lorentzen embedded himself for three years, hunched down in the back of their ambulance and capturing the dramatic events with his phone.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">This phone was often attached to the ambulance's hood, watching the faces of Juan Ochoa and his teenage son Fer as they negotiate the city's traffic, with Juan shouting through the loudspeaker to try and clear people who have taken no notice of the siren. Late in the film, this vantage point presents us with a distraught mother as she rides up front while her young daughter receives treatment in the back. It's the film's most unbearably gripping sequence, but Lorentzen has a keen sense of what to show us and what to look away from. He generally views patients from behind or lets us glimpse them in the edges of the frame while focusing on the Ochoas. As one patient lies on a gurney while waiting to be transported into the hospital, her two arms briefly extend into the shot from beneath the frame, as she examines her bloodstained hands. Perhaps she's trying to come to terms with what has happened to her. Maybe she's wondering how much this is going to end up costing.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Despite the amount of time he spent filming, Lorentzen has been judicious with his footage. <i>Midnight Family</i> runs for a shade over 80 minutes and Lorentzen, who edited the film himself, gives it a narrative shape through an escalating series of crises that the Ochoa family has to negotiate. They live from incident to incident with no idea how much they are going to make in a single night, and on many occasions they barely recoup enough to pay for their nightly meal. Given their perilous situation, they inevitably begin encouraging patients to opt for a private hospital, where they will have a better chance of getting paid, even if the state facility is closer. As they pick up more critically ill patients, this question takes on life-and-death ramifications; their own desperation is pushing them to exploit people in a desperate situation, and while he shoots with empathy, Lorentzen also gives us plenty of room to ponder the ethics of the family's tactics.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><i>Midnight Family</i> is both tight and loose. Lorentzen knows when to ramp up the tension but he also gives us a sense of the long hours spent waiting for a call, and he's fortunate that the family he has chosen to follow are so engaging. In particular, teenager Juan provides an entertaining running gag as he breathlessly narrates the evening's action in regular phone calls to his unseen girlfriend, while his younger brother Josué prefers riding in the ambulance and helping out with the family business to doing his homework or even going to school. Josué's desire to be at the heart of this drama is perfectly understandable, but we are left wondering what the future holds for him, his family and this city. The current situation, caused by institutional failure and driven by desperation, doesn't appear to be serving anyone, least of all those most in need.</span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IUPKLlvtt-Y/XlL3Pdt9ftI/AAAAAAAAIp0/fC8If3aZFp87KKKX61wN65jOqq5BS4vsgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/1_fWXaB_I2XVJuVd_3m5j9UQ.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IUPKLlvtt-Y/XlL3Pdt9ftI/AAAAAAAAIp0/fC8If3aZFp87KKKX61wN65jOqq5BS4vsgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/1_fWXaB_I2XVJuVd_3m5j9UQ.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Institutional failure lies at the heart of <i>The Public</i> too, but this sedate drama is unlikely to get any viewers' pulses racing, or to leave any ambiguities for audiences to ponder as the credits roll. Emilio Estevez wrote and directed the film, as well as starring in the lead role, and he makes his points emphatically and repeatedly: homelessness is bad, libraries are good. <i>The Public</i> is about a group of homeless people, who habitually use the Cincinatti Public Library as a de facto shelter during the day and one day refuse to leave when the library closes. They instead decide to occupy the space, staging a peaceful protest against the city's lack of sufficient shelters, which has led to a number of deaths during a recent cold snap; but despite the massed ranks of police and media outside, and dark mutterings of how these situations “never end well,” the film never develops any tension. Estevez's writing is too blunt and simplistic, and his direction lacks urgency. He builds a number of subplots into the narrative, like Alec Balwin's search for his missing son (you'll never guess where he shows up!) or Estevez's own unlikely romance with Taylor Schilling, but these threads only serve to pad out the running time rather than illuminating our understanding of the characters, who remain resolutely one-dimensional throughout.&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Estevez gives us clear heroes and villains here, with the most notable villains being a perma-sneering Christian Slater as a slick mayoral candidate and Gabrielle Union's fame-hungry TV reporter. When Estevez quotes a chunk of </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Grapes of Wrath</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> during a news broadcast, the good guys – like his assistant (Jena Malone) – get it, while Slater and Union just give us a “What the hell was that?!” reaction.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">All of this may serve to suggest that <i>The Public</i> is a bad movie&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">–</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">&nbsp;and, well, yeah it kind of is&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">–</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">&nbsp;but as it unfolded I found myself warming to it more than I expected to. There's something endearing about its unabashed sincerity and while it's never really exciting or moving, it's no hardship to spend time in the company of actors like Baldwin, Slater or Jeffrey Wright, many of whom do decent work despite the insufficient writing. Best of all is Michael K. Williams as the homeless rebels' ringleader. So often better than the material he's given, Williams is the kind of actor who is capable of single-handedly altering the energy of a scene, and boy do a number of scenes in <i>The Public</i> need the kind of charge he can deliver. I don't think Emilio Estevez is a good enough filmmaker to give a social issues movie like this the gravitas and edge it needs to fire up an audience, but he is a good enough filmmaker to make the kind of gentle, pandering movie that exerts a moderate hold on our attention for two hours before quickly dissipating from memory, and that's the level <i>The Public</i> works on. I have to give him credit for one unexpected move, though. In a film that offers very few surprises, I did not anticipate Estevez's own bare buttocks being so central to the (quite silly) climax. Just when I think he's playing everything too safe, the man literally puts his ass on the line.</span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OhWhq0rfVac/XlL3bRq08_I/AAAAAAAAIp8/d4BYBSHNZC4DCIIC02yVqLhxE9E5OrLCgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/merlin_166611219_62fbe80d-6529-4e5a-b9be-44253fd06a63-superJumbo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OhWhq0rfVac/XlL3bRq08_I/AAAAAAAAIp8/d4BYBSHNZC4DCIIC02yVqLhxE9E5OrLCgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/merlin_166611219_62fbe80d-6529-4e5a-b9be-44253fd06a63-superJumbo.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">I watched </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Like a Boss</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> for one thing and one thing only: Rose Byrne. You owe me one, Rose. Her innate sense of timing sparks a couple of amusing moments in this shambolic affair, and she develops a lively dynamic with Tiffany Haddish that may be worth revisiting in a better film, but no comic talents could save a project so misbegotten. </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Like a Boss</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> exhibits all of the dismal traits that are familiar from too many modern studio comedies: slapdash plotting, boilerplate framing and editing, incoherent characterisation, ugly lighting, wall-to-wall muzak, a trite empowerment/friendship message, and so many dead spots. I'd love to know what script encouraged this many talented performers to sign on, because there is little evidence of it in these 83 choppy minutes. Byrne and Haddish play lifelong friends who run a struggling independent makeup business together, but their personalities and levels of intelligence seem to fluctuate from scene-to-scene, and the plot conceived by cosmetics queen Claire Luna (Salma Hayek as a Jessica Rabbit/Miranda Priestly hybrid, but not as much fun as that sounds) to steal their best product is similarly incomprehensible. This cast is too talented to not raise a few chuckles – and Billy Porter gets the film's one standout comic bit – but the actors mostly appear stranded, shouting their lines into a void and desperately trying to improv some life into half-baked material. The film's ending is an embarrassment for every single person involved, including Lisa Kudrow, who turns up for a baffling one-minute cameo. As the credits began I looked out for the name of the director –&nbsp;just to check the film had one&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">–&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">and I was dispirited to see Miguel Arteta credited. He's a filmmaker who has done sharp, perceptive work in the past, including another recent collaboration with Salma Hayek, the sly and thorny <i>Beatriz at Dinner</i>. I'd advise anyone reading this to skip the fiasco currently polluting cinemas and seek out that earlier film instead.</span>Philip Concannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072326458695080828noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9811696.post-65927654025672136792020-02-10T11:47:00.000+00:002020-02-10T12:35:50.877+00:00Ace in the Hole<span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><i>To mark the passing of Kirk Douglas last week at the age of 103, here's something I wrote on what I consider to be his greatest role, as the ruthless journalist Chuck Tatum in Billy Wilder's ultra-cynical masterpiece </i>Ace in the Hole<i>. This article was originally published on Mostly Film in 2014.</i></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-foXwVJ0QhaA/XkFCIChYQLI/AAAAAAAAIg8/SWN0W9QPm087A_RAEYIuq2iEnxc47zvwwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/GettyImages-128008129-scaled.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-foXwVJ0QhaA/XkFCIChYQLI/AAAAAAAAIg8/SWN0W9QPm087A_RAEYIuq2iEnxc47zvwwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/GettyImages-128008129-scaled.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">On April 18th 1948, The New York Times published an article entitled “The Happy Union of Brackett and Wilder.” The piece was timed to mark the imminent release of two films on which Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder had collaborated – <i>The Emperor Waltz</i> and <i>A Foreign Affair</i> – and to celebrate their enormously successful decade of working together. They had established a degree of freedom and control over their pictures that was exceptional for filmmakers in the studio era, and Wilder told the paper that they were “The happiest couple in Hollywood.” On the evidence of that article, most people would have surely assumed that the Brackett and Wilder team was set to run and run, but it wasn’t to be.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Within two years of the article’s publication, the Brackett-Wilder union was surprisingly dissolved following the release of <i>Sunset Boulevard</i>, which was a critical, commercial and Oscar-winning triumph. “The success of <i>Sunset </i>may have been part of our problem. Where do you go from there?” Wilder asked, and perhaps they did feel that their work together had reached a natural end, but there had also been a degree of tension behind that apparently happy façade. Clashes of taste were common between the earthy and cynical ex-newspaper man Wilder and his more refined partner, and they had temporarily split once before, when Brackett decided that the subject matter and the characters of <i>Double Indemnity</i> were simply too sordid for him to be involved in. One can’t help wondering what he would have made of the first film Wilder directed after their relationship had come to an end.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><i>Ace in the Hole</i> feels like the most concentrated dose of Billy Wilder’s worldview. He presents us with a situation that can only be resolved by people working together towards a common goal, and he fills it with characters defined by their avarice, selfishness and shortsightedness. At a time when a hero is required, Wilder gives us Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas), who swaggers into the offices of the Albuquerque Sun-Bulletin determined to secure a position. “I can handle big news and little news” he tells his prospective employer, “And if there’s no news, I’ll go out and bite a dog.” He talks almost boastfully of having been fired from papers in three cities for various infractions, but there’s something undeniably seductive about his wisecracking arrogance, and it initially seems as if Wilder is setting him up as a roguish, maverick anti-hero. However, we soon find out how truly dangerous a man like Chuck Tatum can be.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">After a miserable year spent ankle-deep in ‘little news’, Tatum finally stumbles across the big one when he happens to be the first man on the scene of an accident that has left Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict) trapped in a mountain cave. Tatum quickly makes a show of organising the rescue effort, but his thoughts are only on one thing – spinning this story into something sensational. He figures out the human interest angle, forms an unsteady alliance with Leo’s wife Lorraine (Jan Sterling) – even though this canny and callous blonde is hardly the type to play the tearful spouse that he requires – and, crucially, he forces the contractor coordinating the dig to opt for the riskier method of extraction, because that will take longer. “Floyd Collins lasted 18 days” Chuck says wistfully, “if I had just one week of this…”</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Floyd Collins was a cave explorer who became trapped in a narrow passage in Sand Cave, Kentucky in 1925. Despite the best efforts of rescuers above the surface, Collins died of thirst and exposure before he could be reached, but in the period between his accident and death he had become a media sensation. William Burke Miller was a reporter at the Louisville Courier-Journal who was sent to cover the incident and began filing regular reports from the scene, even managing to crawl into the cave to speak with Collins, pray with him and bring him food. He was rewarded with the Pulitzer Prize, which Tatum is quick to mention to his photographer as a Machiavellian plan takes shape in his mind.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Billy Wilder had enjoyed success in previous years by casting actors like Fred MacMurray and Ray Milland against type, but here takes a he different approach and maximises his star’s singular assets. Douglas’s shark-like grin has rarely seemed as devilish as it does here, with Tatum’s eyes shining brightly in the dark cave as opportunity knocks, and the star dives into his unscrupulous character with evident relish, making him simultaneously an attractive and repellent figure. What’s remarkable about <i>Ace in the Hole</i>, though, is that Chuck Tatum is far from the only abhorrent character on show.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">It would have been easy for Wilder to set <i>Ace in the Hole</i> up as an attack on the press, but that’s not what the film is about. Everywhere you look in this picture there are people who take one glance at Leo Minosa’s predicament and start thinking about what they can get out of it. Lorraine sees money pouring in from tourists and begins imagining a new life in New York away from her husband; the local sheriff thinks about how he can use this to aid his re-election; even a visiting family is keen to taste the spotlight by telling reporters that they were first on the scene. The area around the cave becomes not just a media circus but a literal circus, with a big wheel going up on site, vendors selling their wares, and families gathering for this festival of rubbernecking. With <i>Ace in the Hole</i>, Wilder is sticking the knife into all of us. And it still stings.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><i>Ace in the Hole</i> is a film about a media fuelled by sensation and a public scrambling desperately to claim a piece of the pie. When it was released in 1951 it had its roots in recent events (as well as the Floyd Collins story, Wilder was inspired by Kathy Fiscus and the Lindbergh baby), but while it is a film of its time, <i>Ace in the Hole</i> succeeds as a film for our times too. Chuck is prone to tossing out aphorisms like “It’s a good story today. Tomorrow they’ll wrap a fish in it” and “Bad news sells best. Good news is no news” – lines that sound entirely applicable to an age of 24-hour coverage, impulsive tweet reactions, and the insatiable need to be first, loudest and exclusive rather than right.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Over 60 years after its release, <i>Ace in the Hole</i> remains a potent brew, and it proved unpalatable for critics and audiences in 1951. Paramount didn’t know what the hell to do with the film, and they tried changing the title to <i>The Big Parade</i> before admitting defeat and leaving Wilder to contemplate the first flop of his career. “I think my mistake was in offering the American public a shot of vinegar when they thought they were going to get a nice cocktail” the director surmised, but perhaps his real mistake was that he simply held up a mirror and allowed the public to see a part of themselves that they recognised but didn’t want to see writ large. It was a lesson he took to heart, and while he went on to make a series of acclaimed and hugely successful films (his next feature <i>Stalag 17</i> made enough to cover this film’s losses), he never again burrowed so deep into the true darkness at the heart of human nature. “If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny” he later advised, “or they’ll kill you.”</span>Philip Concannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072326458695080828noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9811696.post-91996133485808929032020-01-30T11:35:00.002+00:002020-01-30T11:35:41.233+00:00Queen & Slim<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Pisrg0kpoG0/XjK_X4LiPMI/AAAAAAAAH48/OdctR2RvntoZ_AuLzuiCd39aQC61haQ0wCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/queenandslim.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1200" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Pisrg0kpoG0/XjK_X4LiPMI/AAAAAAAAH48/OdctR2RvntoZ_AuLzuiCd39aQC61haQ0wCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/queenandslim.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One of the best scenes in <i>Queen &amp; Slim </i>takes place in a bar in Georgia. Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith) and Slim (Daniel Kaluuya) are a young couple on the run, having killed a policeman in self-defence. This bar offers them some respite, allowing them to drink, dance and momentarily forget their perilous situation, and it is entirely populated and owned by black people. “Don’t worry,” the proprietor tells Slim, handing him drinks on the house. “You’re safe here.”</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/reviews-recommendations/queen-slim-black-lovers-on-run-melina-matsoukas-daniel-kaluuya-jodie-turner-smith-lena-waithe"><i>Read the rest of my Sight &amp; Sound review here</i></a></span>Philip Concannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072326458695080828noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9811696.post-12935884845300159312020-01-17T13:41:00.000+00:002020-01-17T13:41:05.244+00:00Robert Pattinson on The Lighthouse<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FBwYIh8PnRI/XiG5YInsbtI/AAAAAAAAH4I/NkAzxPz0y58JmDeK847U6goLgXJJOvZAACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/screen-shot-2019-07-30-at-12-38-14-pm-1564504865.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="934" data-original-width="1600" height="232" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FBwYIh8PnRI/XiG5YInsbtI/AAAAAAAAH4I/NkAzxPz0y58JmDeK847U6goLgXJJOvZAACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/screen-shot-2019-07-30-at-12-38-14-pm-1564504865.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the same year that the <i>Twilight </i>saga ended, Robert Pattinson starred in David Cronenberg’s <i>Cosmopolis </i>(2012), and it felt like a statement of intent from a young actor determined to take control of his career. Pattinson is a risk-taker who is drawn to directors with unique visions and roles that push him to extremes, and <i>The Lighthouse</i> is the latest chapter in an increasingly impressive body of work.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i><a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/interviews/robert-pattinson-making-lighthouse-robert-eggers-willem-dafoe-acting-style-finding-directors">Read my Sight &amp; Sound interview with Robert Pattinson here</a></i></span>Philip Concannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072326458695080828noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9811696.post-77208169868516084762020-01-08T00:16:00.001+00:002020-01-08T00:17:35.946+00:001917<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Dns46UhxCnQ/XhUfWursdLI/AAAAAAAAH24/dwo3_AhnvYQREQzK7RgSPBHlEc2Cl0neACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/1917-2019-003-george-mckay-in-trench-flying-debris.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="1000" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Dns46UhxCnQ/XhUfWursdLI/AAAAAAAAH24/dwo3_AhnvYQREQzK7RgSPBHlEc2Cl0neACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/1917-2019-003-george-mckay-in-trench-flying-debris.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">The last time Sam Mendes went to war it was with <i>Jarhead </i>(2005), an adaptation of Anthony Swofford’s Gulf War memoir, and it was a film defined by stasis, with its battle-ready marines sinking into frustration, boredom and delirium as they waited for their promised conflict to materialise. A similar approach might have been appropriate for a film about the Great War – a war of attrition in which men spent months inching through trenches and tunnels – but instead <i>1917 </i>is a work of propulsive forward motion and non-stop action.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Over the course of 24 hours, Lance Corporal Schofield (George MacKay) must escape from a collapsing trench, avoid being hit by a crashing plane, take out an unseen sniper, kill a man with his bare hands, jump into a ferocious river (which takes him over a waterfall, naturally) and race across the frontlines as shells explode around him. It’s World War I: The Ride. When giving Schofield his orders, General Erinmore (Colin Firth) quotes Rudyard Kipling – “Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne, He travels the fastest who travels alone” – and the haste with which Schofield sprints through much of the film suggests he might be on to something.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><i><a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/reviews-recommendations/1917-sam-mendes-george-mackay-world-war-one-shot-action-ride">Read the rest of my review on the Sight &amp; Sound&nbsp;website</a></i></span>Philip Concannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072326458695080828noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9811696.post-29130485331677094382020-01-07T09:49:00.001+00:002020-01-07T09:49:43.258+00:00Amanda<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dkRBz4Gif5s/XhPMXL1mrLI/AAAAAAAAH2s/vmXcMxkhurIyVAXaGAtlfhcrz0wOlSNHgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/output-onlinejpgtools.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="861" data-original-width="1438" height="238" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dkRBz4Gif5s/XhPMXL1mrLI/AAAAAAAAH2s/vmXcMxkhurIyVAXaGAtlfhcrz0wOlSNHgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/output-onlinejpgtools.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Everyone is <i>Amanda </i>is wounded and grieving, but the key to the power of Mikhaël Hers’s film lies in its understanding of the private and unpredictable nature of grief. At a number of points in the film, we see these characters suddenly double over, unable to stem the flow of tears that have welled up without warning. It’s a reminder that there is no set timetable for the mourning process, and that we have to try and get on with our day-to-day lives with the knowledge that our pain could sneak up and cripple us at any moment. When seven-year-old Amanda (Isaure Multrier) discovers that her uncle David (Vincent Lacoste) has discarded her mother’s toothbrush from the bathroom some weeks after her death, she admonishes him and demands that he return them to their rightful place. She’ll be ready to move on when she’s ready.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">These emotional states are allowed to unfold organically in <i>Amanda </i>– nothing feels forced, even if the incident that ruptures their lives is such a spectacular and catastrophic one. Amanda's mother Sandrine (Ophélia Kolb) is one of the many victims of a terrorist shooting in a Paris park, and David likely would have suffered the same fate if a delayed train hadn't meant he was cycling towards the carnage as the perpetrators were speeding away in the opposite direction. The act itself happens off screen, we only stumble upon the shocking aftermath as David does, and an eerie stillness descends on this portion of the film, which is at odds with the vibrancy Hers had established in the earlier scenes, aided by the warmth and richness of Sébastien Buchmann's 16mm cinematography.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Of course, having Sandrine suffer a sudden untimely death by any means could have produced a similar effect, but the use of a terrorist attack allows Hers to draw a wider portrait of a community in mourning, showing both its vulnerability and resilience. We meet other survivors who are coping with their injuries in different ways. The once-confident Léna (Stacy Martin) becomes tentative and nervous, withdraw from the romantic relationship she had begun with David and deciding that she needs to leave the capital to recuperate in the countryside with her mother, while David's friend Axel (Jonathan Cohen) admits that his injury has briefly bolstered a marriage that had been on the rocks. Hers doesn't attempt to dig into the wider political context of terrorism aside from a brief glimpse of a Muslim woman being berated in the street, which leads Amanda to ask David questions about their faith – one of the film's few awkward steps – but he does create a real sense of lives being lived beyond the frame.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Expertly edited by Marion Monnier, <i>Amanda </i>proceeds at a gentle, fluid pace and Hers maintains a measured tone throughout, keeping emotional outbursts or dramatic developments to a minimum but capturing moments that feel extraordinarily specific and authentic. Hers and his actors frequently display fine judgement and sensitivity as they explore this emotionally complex territory. Lacoste makes subtle adjustments to portray his character's developing maturity and stability, while Kolb creates a vivid enough impression in the film's opening half-hour to ensure her absence is felt thereafter. But it's the title character, played by Isaure Multrier, who emerges as the heart of the film. Multrier appears on screen as an unaffected, ordinary child, and all of her reactions feel completely real. In the deeply moving final scene she recalls something her mother said right at the start of the movie, something David can't understand, again suggesting the inner life and private sense of mourning that makes these characters feel so fully realised. My heart broke for her, but Hers leaves his audience in the same delicate place that he leaves his characters – heartbroken, but hopeful.</span>Philip Concannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072326458695080828noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9811696.post-79500274965620036212020-01-06T13:23:00.004+00:002020-01-06T17:21:42.930+00:00Sight & Sound - February 2020<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z1DGJXQx_FA/XhMzgAw5hQI/AAAAAAAAH2A/CWbQrzyXfVAI1mcGWecvq-3IIkV6WfXGgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Dafoe%2BS%2526S.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="853" data-original-width="1305" height="261" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z1DGJXQx_FA/XhMzgAw5hQI/AAAAAAAAH2A/CWbQrzyXfVAI1mcGWecvq-3IIkV6WfXGgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Dafoe%2BS%2526S.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">I've got a couple of articles that I loved writing in the latest issue of Sight &amp; Sound. During last year's London Film Festival, I had the opportunity to meet the great Willem Dafoe to discuss his new film <i>The Lighthouse</i> and to look back at one of the most adventurous careers in the business. Aside from his latest film, our conversation touched on his pursuit of fresh challenges, his relationship with Abel Ferrara, his thoughts on distribution and television and more, and he was such an engaging and thoughtful interviewee. I also really enjoyed interviewing <i>The Lighthouse</i> director Robert Eggers and Dafoe's co-star Robert Pattinson for this feature.</span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EL_TpZezYnU/XhMzj1-snQI/AAAAAAAAH2E/5gaQDMea4LY837HxEtj7FMStpPgg7YmeQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Gilliam%2BS%2526S.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="852" data-original-width="1304" height="261" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EL_TpZezYnU/XhMzj1-snQI/AAAAAAAAH2E/5gaQDMea4LY837HxEtj7FMStpPgg7YmeQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Gilliam%2BS%2526S.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Elsewhere, you can read my report from the set of Terry Gilliam's </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Man Who Killed Don Quixote</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">. I spent a memorable day in Portugal watching Gilliam shoot his long-awaited film back in 2017, and now it's finally reaching UK cinemas I'm delighted to be able to share my experience. If you'd like to read an interview with Terry Gilliam that doesn't solely consist of him ranting incoherently about political correctness, then this is the article for you!</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">I also reviewed a couple of new releases: <i>1917 </i>and <i>Queen &amp; Slim</i>. You can read all of this in the <a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/february-2020-issue">February issue of Sight &amp; Sound</a>, which is on sale now.</span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CUURpCgSyCA/XhMz2cKkqlI/AAAAAAAAH2Q/uTKP2wYAyWU9kWLZibBI9_QLUcodAIA2QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Cover.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="853" data-original-width="652" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CUURpCgSyCA/XhMz2cKkqlI/AAAAAAAAH2Q/uTKP2wYAyWU9kWLZibBI9_QLUcodAIA2QCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Cover.JPG" width="305" /></a></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span>Philip Concannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072326458695080828noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9811696.post-36788522397623783072019-12-31T14:20:00.000+00:002020-01-17T16:39:48.114+00:00The Best Films of 2019<span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">In addition to the 217 older films I saw this year (detailed <a href="http://www.philonfilm.net/2019/12/my-cinema-discoveries-of-2019.html">here</a>), I attended 183 screenings of 2019 films in cinemas this year, making a nice round total of 400. H</span><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">ere are my favourite new films of 2019. Thanks for reading, and Happy New Year!</span><br /><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></b><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">25 – Fighting with My Family (Stephen Merchant)</b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jLwsJ0u6_Pc/Xgsh_KcEYyI/AAAAAAAAHzs/6NMe7mfSRKUghdxsI7_3QTurr5FUpIPmACEwYBhgL/s1600/25%2BFighting%2Bwith%2BMy%2BFamily.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1068" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jLwsJ0u6_Pc/Xgsh_KcEYyI/AAAAAAAAHzs/6NMe7mfSRKUghdxsI7_3QTurr5FUpIPmACEwYBhgL/s400/25%2BFighting%2Bwith%2BMy%2BFamily.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Florence Pugh has had quite a year, being widely celebrated for her performances in <i>Midsommar</i> and Little Women, but her best performance of 2019 came in this unexpectedly terrific crowdpleaser, which was the least heralded of her three films. Based on the true story of Saraya Knight's journey from amateur Norwich wrestler to WWE champion, the film follows a classic underdog narrative template and hits all of the story beats that you'd anticipate. But what distinguishes the film is the way Merchant’s screenplay keeps Saraya's brother Zak in focus as her star ascends, a choice that gives the film a surprisingly rich emotional texture; exploring the difference between chasing your dream and losing it, and the fine margins that separate potential stars from everyone else. Pugh and Jack Lowden are both terrific as the wrestling siblings, while Vince Vaughn is perfectly cast as Saraya's tough-love mentor.</span><br /><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></b><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">24 – Under the Silver Lake (David Robert Mitchell)</b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-81EjPHyaSnE/Xgsh-1dFj9I/AAAAAAAAHzo/vnrFSFhW2W4XBeAVZyhoAffXtJ1dO3ScQCEwYBhgL/s1600/24%2BUnder%2Bthe%2BSilver%2BLake.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="671" data-original-width="1450" height="183" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-81EjPHyaSnE/Xgsh-1dFj9I/AAAAAAAAHzo/vnrFSFhW2W4XBeAVZyhoAffXtJ1dO3ScQCEwYBhgL/s400/24%2BUnder%2Bthe%2BSilver%2BLake.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Much of David Robert Mitchell's difficult second film put me in mind of <i>Southland Tales</i>, especially as this is another instance of me preferring a young director's messier and more divisive follow-up to his acclaimed debut. <i>Under the Silver Lake</i> is an absurdist shaggy-dog tale densely packed with pop culture ephemera, and it's built around a terrific performance by Andrew Garfield as a man who thinks he's Philip Marlowe, but is really a deluded loser with no life experience beyond his video games and porn mags. Mitchell is self-consciously venturing into the same L.A. Noir territory that many great filmmakers have explored before, but he tackles everything with brash confidence and arresting visual style, aided by Mike Gioulakis's superb cinematography, and it's packed with brilliant – and frequently hilarious – standalone sequences.</span><br /><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></b><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">23 – The Beach Bum (Harmony Korine)</b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-a8tdV_s4c8E/Xgsh-67xomI/AAAAAAAAHzk/gUcY4n9czhs1d5AYH5V7LcB9JtUktXklwCEwYBhgL/s1600/23%2BThe%2BBeach%2BBum.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-a8tdV_s4c8E/Xgsh-67xomI/AAAAAAAAHzk/gUcY4n9czhs1d5AYH5V7LcB9JtUktXklwCEwYBhgL/s400/23%2BThe%2BBeach%2BBum.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">The new Harmony Korine film is also the*most* Harmony Korine film. The Beach Bum is a stoned, meandering, gleefully nuts odyssey painted in vivid, delirious shades by Benoît Debie. The plotting is haphazard nonsense, and Korine's sense of editing and structure is uneven to say the least, but he finds transcendence in the most unexpected places, and it's just so damn funny. Matthew McConaughey achieves Peak McConaughey, but the movie is comprehensively stolen by Martin Lawrence, with his ten-minute cameo being the single funniest sequence in any 2019 film – "Four deaths in over eight straight years of dolphin touring is a terrific record!" Sitting alone in an empty Romanian multiplex and cackling like Max Cady throughout this movie is one of my fondest cinemagoing memories of the year.</span><br /><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></b><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">22 – All is True (Kenneth Branagh)</b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-apOIIZrz-LM/Xgsh-adk4QI/AAAAAAAAHzg/zTAdIdwb3oIbpIDa-4Z2PP0UrkIyijfPQCEwYBhgL/s1600/22%2BAll%2BIs%2BTrue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1071" data-original-width="1600" height="267" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-apOIIZrz-LM/Xgsh-adk4QI/AAAAAAAAHzg/zTAdIdwb3oIbpIDa-4Z2PP0UrkIyijfPQCEwYBhgL/s400/22%2BAll%2BIs%2BTrue.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Having directed five William Shakespeare adaptations (plus the Shakespeare-adjacent <i>In the Bleak Midwinter</i>), it was perhaps inevitable that Kenneth Branagh would one day play the Bard himself at some point, and fortunately he makes a very good job of it. Despite the title, this is a speculative and fictionalized account of the writer's final years, and in fact much of the film is concerned with the lies and stories that people tell to avoid facing painful truths. Branagh's beautiful widescreen framing and patient storytelling gives the actors plenty of space to develop fine, nuanced performances, with Kathryn Wilder and Lydia Wilson impressing as his two daughters and Ian McKellen delivering a marvellous cameo. Branagh himself is wonderful, and the scene in which he talks to the priest about his dead son is among his finest moments as an actor. As a portrait of an artist in his twilight years, contemplating his legacy, I found it very moving.</span><br /><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></b><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">21 – Pain &amp; Glory (Pedro Almodóvar)</b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aYF7j3aSCko/Xgsh9lUBveI/AAAAAAAAHzY/9EDW78yU73kUEnniSH6d_plpwpL92ihBgCEwYBhgL/s1600/20%2BPain%2B%2526%2BGlory.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aYF7j3aSCko/Xgsh9lUBveI/AAAAAAAAHzY/9EDW78yU73kUEnniSH6d_plpwpL92ihBgCEwYBhgL/s400/20%2BPain%2B%2526%2BGlory.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">As a film about an ageing director looking back over his life and exploring the relationship between experience and art, <i>Pain &amp; Glory</i> is a classic late work. It often feels like it is touching on themes that Almodóvar has explored before, but I still found it an absorbing and very moving experience. Banderas's approximation of his longtime collaborator in the lead role is a sensitive and beautifully judged piece of acting, and one scene in particular– in which he is reunited with a former lover after many years – is one of the most tender and bittersweet scenes that Almodóvar has ever shot. As ever, the director's use of colour and light is often breathtaking, and he frequently pulls off moments of remarkable intimacy and beauty with a mastery that feels so effortless. It all comes together in the very last shot; a climactic <i>coup de cinéma </i>that elevates <i>Pain &amp; Glory</i> from a very good film to a great one.</span><br /><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></b><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">20 – Rose Plays Julie (Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy)</b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kabfgWgkZ7U/Xgsh9PO4XFI/AAAAAAAAHzQ/WaxCP90WfokzyaoMfsXmo1s4dq0hj7CKQCEwYBhgL/s1600/19%2B-%2BRose%2BPlays%2BJulie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="424" data-original-width="1000" height="168" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kabfgWgkZ7U/Xgsh9PO4XFI/AAAAAAAAHzQ/WaxCP90WfokzyaoMfsXmo1s4dq0hj7CKQCEwYBhgL/s400/19%2B-%2BRose%2BPlays%2BJulie.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">The first thing to say about </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Rose Plays Julie</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> is that it’s a cracking thriller – taut, twisty and riveting – but this being a film from the Desperate Optimists, it’s something much stranger and more haunting than a standard genre piece. Their film explores ideas of identity, memory and the way the past reverberates into the present through three characters who are connected by a single act of violence committed two decades earlier. Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy set up a number of scenes that seem to play to genre conventions before upending our expectations, and the performances from Orla Brady, Aidan Gillen and especially the remarkable Ann Skelly become more compelling as every revelation shatters these characters’ sense of who they are. Through their brilliant use of space, unnerving musical choices and razor-sharp editing, Lawlor and Molloy generate a gnawing sense of tension and unease, and the effect of </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Rose Plays Julie</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> lingers long after the credits have rolled.</span><br /><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></b><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">19 –Parasite (Bong Joon-ho)</b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tUWSNDsB0xI/Xgsh8xulkUI/AAAAAAAAHzM/PBz-b1hMo-UnleDMj6xPT6dxKC9xvMSFwCEwYBhgL/s1600/18%2B-%2BParasite.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tUWSNDsB0xI/Xgsh8xulkUI/AAAAAAAAHzM/PBz-b1hMo-UnleDMj6xPT6dxKC9xvMSFwCEwYBhgL/s400/18%2B-%2BParasite.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">I remain a little surprised at how much this film has broken out to become a hit outside Korea, as I don't think it's significantly better than the extraordinary run of films that Bong Joon-ho made in his native country from 2003 to 2009. However, it’s still an expertly crafted film that displays the director’s masterful control of plots twists and tonal shifts, and his unique ability to pull us into one kind of film only to reveal something completely different. I was already enjoying the sly social satire of the film’s opening hour, and the way Bong played with the contrast between these two families and their living spaces, before the addition of a whole new layer of drama halfway through throws the whole movie into a new direction, and Bong never stops finding ways to surprise the audience. It’s a peach of a movie.</span><br /><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></b><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">18 – Öndög (Wang Quan'an)</b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A8rUA3eyBf8/Xgsh8peuFsI/AAAAAAAAHzI/MP_mk7KIrIAq6xeNUK0CZelrWAnWLO1-wCEwYBhgL/s1600/17%2B%25C3%2596nd%25C3%25B6g.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A8rUA3eyBf8/Xgsh8peuFsI/AAAAAAAAHzI/MP_mk7KIrIAq6xeNUK0CZelrWAnWLO1-wCEwYBhgL/s400/17%2B%25C3%2596nd%25C3%25B6g.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">This film begins with the startling discovery of a naked corpse in the middle of nowhere, but it doesn't develop into the thriller or police procedural that you might anticipate. It's a warm, rambling and unexpectedly hilarious study of a handful of characters living in rural Mongolia. I love the way Quan'an shoots this landscape, positioning his actors as small figures against the endless horizon and ever-changing skies, and his compositions are often imaginative and witty. The pacing of the film is slow and measured, but I wasn't bored for a minute.&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><i>Öndög</i></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">&nbsp;is one of the most thoughtfully directed and visually striking films of the year and it&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">completely captivated me.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>17 –Honeyland (Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefano)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9Z88vmiuAK4/Xgsh8Cst08I/AAAAAAAAHzE/g5c1W7YVvMwJpPflquOd-QSBAoPDJhvPQCEwYBhgL/s1600/16%2BHoneyland.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1500" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9Z88vmiuAK4/Xgsh8Cst08I/AAAAAAAAHzE/g5c1W7YVvMwJpPflquOd-QSBAoPDJhvPQCEwYBhgL/s400/16%2BHoneyland.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Honeyland</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> initially appears to be a simple and unassuming portrait of a particular way of life, but it quietly grows into a devastating fable about old traditions and the natural order of things being destroyed by greed and short-sightedness. Watching Hatidze go through her routine of collecting the honey ("Half for you, half for me") is utterly captivating, while watching her neighbours attempt to dothe same is often comical, until we see the consequences of their actions. The cinematography by Fejmi Daut and Samir Ljuma is superbly composed, utilising natural light and the stark landscape brilliantly, while the elegant way this narrative is shaped underscores the absurdity of documentaries never being in contention for major editing awards. I admit to being curious how much of this is pure documentary, as it almost to good to be true for a plot this riveting and resonant to unfold in front of the cameras in this isolated spot, but whatever the truth behind </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Honeyland</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, it's unquestionably a beautiful piece of filmmaking.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>16– Little Women (Greta Gerwig)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--_bXObXyFio/XgsiBmqt6-I/AAAAAAAAH0M/oI2JQCZNYRskEiLFbFSKSOe4jqJVlEbGACEwYBhgL/s1600/Little%2BWomen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="710" data-original-width="1600" height="177" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--_bXObXyFio/XgsiBmqt6-I/AAAAAAAAH0M/oI2JQCZNYRskEiLFbFSKSOe4jqJVlEbGACEwYBhgL/s400/Little%2BWomen.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Greta Gerwig’s take on Louisa May Alcott’s much-adapted novel is a refreshing case of a filmmaker tackling an iconic work with a genuine sense of imagination and perspective. It took me a while to get on board with her structural choices, as she collapses the two volumes of the book into a series of flashbacks, but once I had found its rhythm, </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Little Women</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> proved to be an incredibly rewarding experience. Gerwig’s cross-cutting accentuates the visual echoes and emotional contrasts between the two halves of the story, and she imbues ensemble scenes with an invigorating energy, full of physicality and overlapping dialogue. The film’s breathless pace can make a few of the storylines feel a little truncated, but the moments that do land really pierce the heart, and are beautifully carried off by Gerwig’s near-perfect cast. If only all Hollywood literary adaptations were made with such evident love, intelligence and artistry.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>15– Cordillera of Dreams (Patricio Guzmán)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gmH_xUdQgSg/Xgsh74YyPkI/AAAAAAAAHzA/UeSK2aTeuHcRXw3RNHkHvyNphh075xlbACEwYBhgL/s1600/15%2BCordillera%2Bof%2BDreams.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gmH_xUdQgSg/Xgsh74YyPkI/AAAAAAAAHzA/UeSK2aTeuHcRXw3RNHkHvyNphh075xlbACEwYBhgL/s400/15%2BCordillera%2Bof%2BDreams.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">After <i>Nostalgia for the Light</i> and <i>The Pearl Button</i>, this film feels like a culmination for Patricio Guzmán, as he contemplates the fate of the country he left as a young man, and has observed from a distance for more than forty years. "In my soul, the smoke from the ashes of my destroyed home has never cleared." <i>Cordillera of Dreams</i> is a film about the denial of history, and the social and economic legacy of Pinochet's <i>coup d'état</i>. I love the way Guzmán leads us into this story, inviting us to go on the journey with him; his tone is patient, inquisitive and empathetic.&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><i>Cordillera of Dreams</i> is</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">&nbsp;a poetic and very moving piece of filmmaking, and&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Guzmán's</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">&nbsp;personal exploration of Chile's history over the course of his career surely stands as one of the most significant bodies of work in cinema.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>14 – Diamantino (Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JucrqQu99RE/Xgsh7rgOplI/AAAAAAAAHy8/Ma5jdte5o4g34IGmN0x8wr0CrUoJF0wogCEwYBhgL/s1600/14%2BDiamantino.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="563" data-original-width="1000" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JucrqQu99RE/Xgsh7rgOplI/AAAAAAAAHy8/Ma5jdte5o4g34IGmN0x8wr0CrUoJF0wogCEwYBhgL/s400/14%2BDiamantino.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">This was one of the year’s most delightful surprises. A surreal fable about a footballer who has visions of giant puppies as he plays, but suffers a crisis of confidence after missing a crucial penalty and decides to adopts a young African refugee. But that simple synopsis doesn’t come close to capturing the magic of this loopy sci-fi comedy, which proceeds with charmingly rambunctious energy into a series of bizarre developments, including genetic experimentation and Portugal’s campaign to leave the EU. Carloto Cotta's sincere dumb naïveté as this superstar Portuguese footballer is perfectly pitched (and a lot more endearing than his real-life inspiration) while Charles Ackley Anderson’s fluid and vibrant cinematography heightens the film’s singular charms. It reminded me a little of Bertrand Mandico's surreal gender-swapping fantasy </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Wild Boys</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> from last year, but there's really nothing quite like it.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>13 – Vitalina Varela (Pedro Costa)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--UIT4ZUPXg8/XgtMox8RS0I/AAAAAAAAH08/JIYQ_4O-ahs68uyL5ImGi1nsb-IqM86HgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/12%2BVitalina%2BVarela.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="520" data-original-width="780" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--UIT4ZUPXg8/XgtMox8RS0I/AAAAAAAAH08/JIYQ_4O-ahs68uyL5ImGi1nsb-IqM86HgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/12%2BVitalina%2BVarela.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">I struggled to connect with Pedro Costa’s last film </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Horse Money</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> and I feared that his latest film might prove an arduous watch when I lined up for it early on a Saturday morning, but I found it entirely mesmerising. It's actually a companion piece to </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Horse Money</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, as Costa met Vitalina Varela when making that picture and has used her story as the basis for this haunting film. Costa and his cinematographer Leonardo Simões continue to experiment with digital darkness, and the shadowy images that dominate </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Vitalina Varela</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> are often reminiscent of Rembrandt and Caravaggio, with his figures emerging from and receding into the pitch-black night. He also fills the film with beautifully composed and potent tableaux, and establishes a steady rhythmic flow that I was completely drawn into It's a spellbinding and mysterious film about home, memory, death and regret, and it is anchored by an extraordinarily compelling and touching lead performance from Varela herself</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"></span><br /><div><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">12 – The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg)</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dwNy-Lsv2TA/Xgsh7aRrzMI/AAAAAAAAHy4/EY2qAlwNVK0a2efbTgHp2MiHCvlI5mVNgCEwYBhgL/s1600/13%2BThe%2BSouvenir.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dwNy-Lsv2TA/Xgsh7aRrzMI/AAAAAAAAHy4/EY2qAlwNVK0a2efbTgHp2MiHCvlI5mVNgCEwYBhgL/s400/13%2BThe%2BSouvenir.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Joanna Hogg has grown in fascinating ways as a director with each of her four features, and this memoir of her first faltering steps as a director and the toxic relationship that almost derailed her is her most accomplished work yet.&nbsp; A fragmented memory piece, </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Souvenir</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> is often elliptical and withholding (aptly, for a film that's so much about what's unspoken), but when the emotions pierce through the stillness of Hogg's frames the effect can be shattering. I loved the way Hogg captured the thorny dynamic between these two characters, and how she used this story as a way to examine questions of art and privilege and the way an artist's perspective is shaped by experience. She gets uncannily great performances from her actors, particularly the wonderfully earnest and vulnerable Honor Swinton Byrne, and the climactic three scenes constitute one of the year’s great endings. I can't wait to see where Hogg takes this story in Part II.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>11 – Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nnqSUC3wnFg/XgtT0wH8fXI/AAAAAAAAH1c/d1Z_A9OJhG4mqVtQRGIAuNLO-S0UCTqDQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/11%2BPortrait%2Bof%2Ba%2BLady%2Bon%2BFire.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nnqSUC3wnFg/XgtT0wH8fXI/AAAAAAAAH1c/d1Z_A9OJhG4mqVtQRGIAuNLO-S0UCTqDQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/11%2BPortrait%2Bof%2Ba%2BLady%2Bon%2BFire.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">This is an impeccably crafted and richly layered love story. Sciamma is so attuned to her actors' body language and the power of their glances, and so much of this film is about the dynamic between Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel as they both see and are seen by each other. Her pacing of the film is flawless. It’s patient, measured and controlled for much of the first hour before it gradually loosens with the characters, and then develops a sense of urgency as we sense time running out for these women to be with each other. All of the tension and suppressed emotion that Sciamma and her actors have developed over the course of the film bursts forth in the overwhelming climactic scenes, in which Haenel gives us an extended close-up to rank alongside Nicole Kidman in </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Birth</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">.</span><br /><div><br /></div><div><div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>10– Richard Jewell (Clint Eastwood)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cRVInfRPhbw/Xgsh6Ve3A7I/AAAAAAAAHys/2vKOEzMMNRMHsnRxNtyrPgHFf1GXDUnTgCEwYBhgL/s1600/10%2BRichard%2BJewell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cRVInfRPhbw/Xgsh6Ve3A7I/AAAAAAAAHys/2vKOEzMMNRMHsnRxNtyrPgHFf1GXDUnTgCEwYBhgL/s400/10%2BRichard%2BJewell.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b></b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Ever since January I've had Clint Eastwood's <i>The Mule</i> sitting in this list, but then he outdid himself with this even more impressive and resonant feature. The story of Richard Jewell always felt like a perfect fit for Eastwood,particularly as he moved into his late-career examination of American heroism, which has focused on real-life tales of men whose actions see them thrust unexpectedly into the spotlight. Screenwriter Billy Ray's telling of this story is classical and focused, and Eastwood gives the actors plenty of space to find grace notes in their performances; in fact, this is one of the strongest ensembles he has ever directed, with Paul Walter Hauser, Kathy Bates and Sam Rockwell doing outstanding work. The film can be very funny – I loved Rockwell's reactions to his client's endless deference to authority –but ultimately it's a sincere, gripping and moving film about an unseemly rush to judgement, and the tragedy of ordinary lives suddenly being upended by a media storm.</span></div></div><div><br /></div><div><div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>9 – Beanpole(Kantemir Balagov)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SlAZTwGoiEQ/XgsiBfljIGI/AAAAAAAAH0I/pnciTJyYiAsf1ZrY7cRFH6y2xGpWEQVJgCEwYBhgL/s1600/9%2BBeanpole.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SlAZTwGoiEQ/XgsiBfljIGI/AAAAAAAAH0I/pnciTJyYiAsf1ZrY7cRFH6y2xGpWEQVJgCEwYBhgL/s400/9%2BBeanpole.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"></span></div><div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">The lingering trauma of war is explored through the relationship between two women in Kantemir Balagov's remarkable <i>Beanpole</i>. All the characters in this film have been scarred by the recent past, and Balagov's depiction of their painful experiences is frequently very bleak, but they are also filmed with great tenderness and empathy. There is some sensational filmmaking on display here,with mesmerising cinematography by Ksenia Sereda (the use of colour is stunning) and vividly atmospheric sound design, and the performances are flawless. Viktoria Mironshnichenko and Vasilisa Perelygina play off each other beautifully, but I was also struck by Kseniya Kutepova, who shares one brilliant scene with Perelygina towards the end. <i>Beanpole</i> might seem like an arduous exercise in Russian miserabilism on the surface, but it's a great film about grief, guilt and solidarity, and I found it to be a wholly absorbing and rewarding experience.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>8 – Bait (Mark Jenkin)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OZ4CVSAu1pQ/XgsiBDLdTlI/AAAAAAAAH0E/fdwpfXGaoMI9Vky-zK35PfPYPyx1LUqIgCEwYBhgL/s1600/8%2BBait.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="778" data-original-width="1024" height="303" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OZ4CVSAu1pQ/XgsiBDLdTlI/AAAAAAAAH0E/fdwpfXGaoMI9Vky-zK35PfPYPyx1LUqIgCEwYBhgL/s400/8%2BBait.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"></span></div><div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">I saw <i>Bait</i> twice this year, the first time digitally and the second on 35mm, and seeing it projected on film made me love Mark Jenkin's unique object even more, given how integral the texture of celluloid is to its aesthetic. The black-and-white footage is scratchy and prone to flaring, and the sound has obviously been post-dubbed, and it almost resembles a lost film recently rediscovered after languishing for decades in the recesses of an abandoned cinema. But Jenkin has deliberately used archaic filmmaking techniques to explore very modern concerns. Set in his native Cornwall, <i>Bait</i> centres on the tension between the struggling fishing community and the influx of holidaymakers who have changed the face of the area, and while Jenkin's images may evoke names like Bresson, Epstein or Rossellini,his debut feature is a true British original. Aside from its aesthetic virtues, the film is just such a strong piece of storytelling; it's a funny and riveting human drama, and a fascinating exploration of class tensions, destructive pride and a changing community. A truly original and brilliant piece of work.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>7– Amazing Grace (Sydney Pollack and Alan Elliott)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nYDjFuZzbRA/XgsiAlx6qMI/AAAAAAAAHz8/343cKmX_9P032Erm64G2kewr07p04r5JQCEwYBhgL/s1600/6%2BAmazing%2BGrace.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1028" data-original-width="1543" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nYDjFuZzbRA/XgsiAlx6qMI/AAAAAAAAHz8/343cKmX_9P032Erm64G2kewr07p04r5JQCEwYBhgL/s400/6%2BAmazing%2BGrace.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"></span></div><div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Following last year's overdue release for <i>The Other Side of the Wind</i>, here's another instance of a film leaping out of the 1970s and straight into my top 10 list. <i>Amazing Grace</i> is a priceless historical document and an impressive feat of restoration and editing, but primarily it is was simply one of the most moving and ecstatic experiences on offer in a cinema in 2019. The film does an incredible job of recording and transmitting the energy in that room; the sense of community, the love and devotion, and the overwhelming waves of emotion. Pollack and his camera team capture so many wonderful, intimate moments, like Rev. James Cleveland having to step away from the piano to sit and cover his weeping face with a towel, or Aretha's father mopping the sweat from her brow as she sings. <i>Amazing Grace</i> is a spectacular, one-of-a-kind picture. Everyone should see it, hear it and feel it.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">6– One Cut of the Dead (</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Shin'ichirô Ueda</span></b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xVcWzkaaToM/XgsiAO-5R8I/AAAAAAAAHz0/QTu0T-IZcQ4Zf03B3e60XdEL_R4FultZACEwYBhgL/s1600/4%2BOne%2BCut%2Bof%2Bthe%2BDead.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xVcWzkaaToM/XgsiAO-5R8I/AAAAAAAAHz0/QTu0T-IZcQ4Zf03B3e60XdEL_R4FultZACEwYBhgL/s400/4%2BOne%2BCut%2Bof%2Bthe%2BDead.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"></span></div><div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Halfway through Shin'ichirô Ueda’s <i>One Cut of the Dead</i>, I have to admit I wasn’t entirely feeling it. The forty-minute single take that the film opens with is clever and amusing, but it's often clunky and awkward too,and just when I felt the movie was running out of steam, Ueda played his trump card. The second half, which deconstructs that long take and reveals the secret behind its intentional awkwardness, is the most brilliantly sustained and inventive feat of comic filmmaking that I've seen in years. I can’t remember the last time a film confounded my expectations and won me over so comprehensively in its second half, but aside from simply being a thrillingly original and satisfying film, <i>One Cut of the Dead</i> can also stake a claim as one of the great films about filmmaking; a surprisingly touching and profound celebration of the the ingenuity and teamwork required to bring a low-budget feature to life against all odds.</span></div></div><div><br /></div><div><div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>5 – Uncut Gems (Josh Safdie and Benny Safdie)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mDJnsKGjcmA/XgtJoBtsfSI/AAAAAAAAH0w/CUTeOAB5QhQEse6GThVDc7NNSL1gTfsJwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/gems.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="942" data-original-width="1600" height="235" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mDJnsKGjcmA/XgtJoBtsfSI/AAAAAAAAH0w/CUTeOAB5QhQEse6GThVDc7NNSL1gTfsJwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/gems.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b></b></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"></span><br /><div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><i>Heaven Knows What</i> was grimy and intense, <i>Good Time</i> was a riveting and nerve-shredding thriller, but Uncut Gems feels like a panic attack. The Safdie brothers just keep upping the ante and honing their filmmaking craft, and their latest effort is their most fully realised film yet. One of the brothers' most notable attributes is the way they can bring together movie stars in image-redefining roles with people who have never acted before, and have them all operating on the same high level. Adam Sandler’s performance here is a tour de force, but there is equally vital work from veteran character actors (Eric Bogosian and Judd Hirsch), people who have never stepped before a camera before (Keith Williams Richards and the sensational Julia Fox), and even celebrities playing themselves (Kevin Garnett and The Weeknd). The Safdies pull the strings masterfully, particularly during the stunningly orchestrated final stretch of the film, during which I almost forgot to breathe. <i>Uncut Gems</i> is one of the all-time great noose-tightening movies.</span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"></span><div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"></span></div><div><div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>4 – A Hidden Life (Terrence Malick)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_ZrycZNryhE/XgsiA62ys_I/AAAAAAAAH0A/K5GbVyvU79cOjQY3G4AkDa52rYIznfsRwCEwYBhgL/s1600/7%2BA%2BHidden%2BLife.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="708" data-original-width="1336" height="211" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_ZrycZNryhE/XgsiA62ys_I/AAAAAAAAH0A/K5GbVyvU79cOjQY3G4AkDa52rYIznfsRwCEwYBhgL/s400/7%2BA%2BHidden%2BLife.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"></span></div><div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">“What difference do you think you can make,one single man in all this madness?” Sean Penn asked Jim Caviezel in <i>The Thin Red Line</i>. “If you die, it's gonna be for nothing.” I thought of this exchange while watching Terrence Malick's return to World War II after two decades, with his portrait of FranzJägerstätter's non-violent resistance to the Nazis zeroing in on the question of what one man can do as the world blows itself to pieces. <i>A Hidden Life</i> is an astonishing masterwork about faith, love and humanity in an increasingly inhuman world; it expresses the anguish of seeing your country transform into something unrecognisable, and the courage it takes to stand tall and hold onto your beliefs. August Diehl and Valerie Pachner invest so much understated emotion into their performances, and watching them go through this ordeal – first together, then apart – is profoundly moving. After making a series of films in which his style reflected the rootless wandering of his protagonists, Malick has a clearer sense of purpose and focus here, although his ability to capture fleeting, spontaneous moments remains peerless. Very few artists transport me the way Terrence Malick does, and <i>A Hidden Life</i> is another transcendent experience.</span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">3 – Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino)</b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"></span><br /><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SnbrTrgGNMc/Xgsh_qqRHHI/AAAAAAAAHzw/Dp3i261nMn8coGU1TLj9IqXREO2vXTQhgCEwYBhgL/s1600/3%2BOnce%2BUpon%2Ba%2BTime%2Bin%2BHollywood.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1010" data-original-width="1500" height="268" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SnbrTrgGNMc/Xgsh_qqRHHI/AAAAAAAAHzw/Dp3i261nMn8coGU1TLj9IqXREO2vXTQhgCEwYBhgL/s400/3%2BOnce%2BUpon%2Ba%2BTime%2Bin%2BHollywood.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"></span><br /><div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">You know a film is hitting your sweet spot when a simple montage of old cinema marquees being lit up is moving you to tears. In fact, this is Tarantino’s most emotionally resonant film in a number of ways: Rick's recognition of his limitations and decline contrasted with Sharon's joy and optimism at seeing herself on screen; the warmth and tenderness that exists in the friendship between Rick and Cliff; and the captivating and elegiac evocation of a lost Hollywood era. I loved the drifting, casual vibe – which never feels slack, even over 165 minutes – and the concurrent Rick/Sharon/Cliff set-pieces in the middle of the film is one of the most astonishing stretches of filmmaking Tarantino has ever pulled off. <i>Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood</i> is plainly the work of a great artist working at the peak of his powers and confidence, and I’ve already revisited the film twice and fallen in love with it a little more each time.</span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"></span><div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"></span></div><div><div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>2 – A Bread Factory:Parts I+II (Patrick Wang)</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CXFEBwFW1lc/Xgsh9f0kBBI/AAAAAAAAHzU/mvP535VphFckAbiWjwKa5EEjIXbGnU21gCEwYBhgL/s1600/2%2BA%2BBread%2BFactory.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="859" data-original-width="1440" height="237" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CXFEBwFW1lc/Xgsh9f0kBBI/AAAAAAAAHzU/mvP535VphFckAbiWjwKa5EEjIXbGnU21gCEwYBhgL/s400/2%2BA%2BBread%2BFactory.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"></span></div><div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Patrick Wang probably could have made <i>A Bread Factory</i> as a single four-hour film, but there's a tonal and stylistic shift in the second part that justifies the division into two distinct halves. Wang makes a lot of bold choices throughout both of these films, and pretty much all of them come off brilliantly. He blends naturalistic drama with extravagantly choreographed song-and-dance numbers and moments of incredible hilarity. His use of long takes puts the onus on his actors and the entire ensemble (all unknown to me, aside from Tyne Daly and Janeane Garofalo), young and old, responds with performances that feel entirely lived-in and true.It's a heartfelt film about community, gentrification, journalistic integrity and artistic independence, but over the course of four hours it also touches on so much more. There's a genuine sense of richness here, as if all of these lives and stories are continuing beyond the frame of the film. <i>A Bread Factory</i> has been made with a deep love of people and an unshakeable belief in the importance of art. I think it's a staggering achievement and I hope a single low-profile screening in London isn't the sum total of its UK release.</span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">1 – The Irishman (Martin Scorsese)</b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"></span><br /><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WKifCgoMdAw/XgtP0DRW_tI/AAAAAAAAH1Q/nNQbUAk_m_wg56IBCauRKAloj24DBLBKQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/irishman-a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WKifCgoMdAw/XgtP0DRW_tI/AAAAAAAAH1Q/nNQbUAk_m_wg56IBCauRKAloj24DBLBKQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/irishman-a.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"></span><br /><div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">A life defined by power and violence, loyalty and betrayal – and what's left at the end of it all for a man seen through his daughter's eyes? <i>The Irishman</i> is Scorsese's saddest and most reflective work; very much a gangster film from the director of <i>Silence</i>, and one that comes face-to-face with mortality. Characters are introduced as dead men, and those who do survive the bullets are just diminished and alone by the end, left with nothing but memories as they wait for the end. From the young punks of <i>Mean Streets</i>, through the flashy and ruthless gangsters of <i>Goodfellas</i> and <i>Casino</i>, to the weary old men of <i>The Irishman</i>, Scorsese and De Niro have given us a <i>Four Seasons</i>-like quartet that explores the propulsive thrill and ultimate emptiness of criminal life with a staggering clarity and force, with the sobering and haunting ending to this film feeling like a perfect final statement. Even at three and a half hours there isn’t a moment I’d want to lose; Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker are in complete command of this material, brilliantly navigating the multiple timelines of Steven Zaillian's screenplay without ever letting the pace drag. I’ve seen the film three times now and the weight of its climactic forty minutes feels greater every time. I expect <i>The Irishman</i> will haunt me until the day I die.</span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"></span></div>Philip Concannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072326458695080828noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9811696.post-82388730218702221892019-12-30T10:55:00.001+00:002019-12-30T10:55:05.894+00:00My Cinema Discoveries of 2019<span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">It was another year of great cinema discoveries, and the below list covers just a fraction of them. In total, I saw 217 non-2019 films in cinemas this year (146 on 35mm, 6 on 16mm and 3 on 70mm) and 146 of these films were first-time viewings. As ever, I’m thankful for being in the privileged position of living in a city that has such an exciting film scene and having the means to experience so much of it, but every year I wonder how much longer this state of affairs can last. Like everything else in society today, film culture feels like it is in a constant state of flux, and with the reality of Brexit finally on the horizon, one wonders how independent cinema and arts organisations will be impacted over the coming years.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Another concern is the recent stories from the United States about Disney withdrawing films from the Fox library from circulation. This policy hasn’t affected the UK yet but Disney’s desire for complete dominance knows no bounds, and corporations withholding all of their entertainment behind paywalls feels increasingly like a model that more studios are likely to adopt as they attempt to maintain control and maximise profit from their back catalogues. Will the cinema landscape look very different by this time next year? I hope not, but for many reasons I’m anxious about the future.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">In the meantime, all I can do is to salute every programmer who made the below screenings possible, and to encourage everyone reading this article to support your closest independent and repertory cinemas and seek out the rare, unusual and intriguing at every opportunity. We all need to do what we can to keep real cinema alive.</span><br /><div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Without further ado, here are my 2019 highlights:</span></div><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></b><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">50 – Naked Tango (Leonard Schrader, 1990)&nbsp;–&nbsp;Cinema Museum, 35mm</span></b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cyo0uw5rkog/XgD0zsNZq1I/AAAAAAAAHnc/iAEMeLluQB86aUzZZfZD00mfuDZedws9wCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/50%2BNaked%2BTango.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1090" data-original-width="1600" height="272" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cyo0uw5rkog/XgD0zsNZq1I/AAAAAAAAHnc/iAEMeLluQB86aUzZZfZD00mfuDZedws9wCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/50%2BNaked%2BTango.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Celluloid Sorceress Nikki Williams paid tribute to Leonard Schrader this year with a welcome 35mm revival of <i>Kiss of the Spider Woman</i> and this ultra-rare screening of his sole directorial credit. The film opens with a silent film clip, which sets the tone for a movie that's completely in thrall to silent cinema; the performances, characterisation and storytelling all feel rooted in the 1920s. Mathilda May and Vincent D'Onofrio sadly don't generate a great deal of heat together, but Juan Ruiz-Anchia's cinematography is extremely stylish and the plot really barrels along, getting everything wrapped up in 90 minutes. <i>Naked Tango</i> is extravagant and often extremely silly (I love the scene where May and D'Onofrio dance in an abattoir, blood sloshing around their shoes, as they hold knives to each other's necks), and it's a&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">highly entertaining erotic melodrama</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>49 – The Night They Raided Minsky's (William Friedkin, 1968) –&nbsp;Prince Charles Cinema, 35mm</b></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-62mgRb8_1tQ/XgD1AVjO9MI/AAAAAAAAHng/mHxU0q6qtfEDzhldfH87OlHoP-MYYTT6wCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/49%2BThe%2BNight%2BThey%2BRaided%2BMinsky%2527s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="869" data-original-width="1200" height="288" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-62mgRb8_1tQ/XgD1AVjO9MI/AAAAAAAAHng/mHxU0q6qtfEDzhldfH87OlHoP-MYYTT6wCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/49%2BThe%2BNight%2BThey%2BRaided%2BMinsky%2527s.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">William Friedkin's direction here is fascinating, simultaneously looking into the past and the future. He uses archive footage and a keen sense of period detail to bring 1920s New York to life, but the camerawork and editing has a jagged, propulsive rhythm that feels invigoratingly out of step with the material. This is a bawdy backstage farce played with great energy by an eclectic cast. That energy sometimes feels misdirected –&nbsp;with a few scenes being more frantic than funny –&nbsp;but it's generally a captivating picture that builds to a brilliant ending, in which Britt Ekland's character accidentally invents the striptease. Jason Robards and Norman Wisdom are a most unlikely double-act, Ekland gives one of her best performances, and Bert Lahr invests the film with the quiet melancholy of the old performer desperate for one last encore: "They still remember me in there..."</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>48 – The Mystery of Oberwald (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1980)&nbsp;</b><b>–&nbsp;</b><b>BFI Southbank, 35mm</b></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EPwRzlnjXAs/XgD1b4xMs5I/AAAAAAAAHns/3__9dLaozDUQw6e3UNprZoojgRJ4W4jtQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/48%2BThe%2BOberwald%2BMystery.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="520" data-original-width="960" height="216" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EPwRzlnjXAs/XgD1b4xMs5I/AAAAAAAAHns/3__9dLaozDUQw6e3UNprZoojgRJ4W4jtQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/48%2BThe%2BOberwald%2BMystery.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">It certainly is a shock to see an Antonioni film that looks like this, being an early experiment with video, and this material seems like such an odd fit for him too. The plotting can come off as a little stagey and sleepy at times, but it gradually drew me in, with Monica Vitti (in their last collaboration) delivering a mesmerising and moving performance, and the director finding some brilliant compositions throughout. Antonioni's real interest lies in what his new camera can do, and he can't resist trying out some audacious lighting and colour trickery in almost every scene. Sometimes he drains out the colour and at other times he blows the colours out to garish extremes; occasionally he even manipulates the image so two characters in the same shot will be shaded in completely different ways, with one character exuding a blue-ish glow whenever he appears. This experimentation isn't always successful, but it does result in a film that's quite unlike anything else Antonioni ever made. A fascinating oddity.</span><br /><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></b><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">47 – Der Fan (Eckhart Schmidt, 1982)&nbsp;–&nbsp;Barbican,&nbsp;35mm</span></b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-52lO7QvZqRI/XgD1kfBaUbI/AAAAAAAAHnw/dO8oT2RQcXodHALUPKRz51dljucc7QR5wCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/47%2BDer%2BFan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="860" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-52lO7QvZqRI/XgD1kfBaUbI/AAAAAAAAHnw/dO8oT2RQcXodHALUPKRz51dljucc7QR5wCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/47%2BDer%2BFan.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></b></div><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Der Fan</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> was screened from a gorgeous UK release print from the early '80s, although this particular print was marred by some terrible dubbing. Désirée Nosbusch is Simone, a teenager obsessed with enigmatic pop star R (Bodo Steiger), and I really liked the opening third of the movie that dealt with her infatuation; daydreaming at school, repeatedly going to the post office to see if her letters have been answered, and fantasising about their inevitable meeting. The middle section –&nbsp;in which Simone meets her idol as he shoots a TV show –&nbsp;dragged a little, and I don't think it was necessary to make us watch R's entire terrible music video in its entirety, but things certainly pick up with the wild (though strangely gore-free) climax! Shot in a detached, hypnotic style (the English-language title is </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Trance</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, which seems apt) </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Der Fan</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> is an uneven but compelling portrait of obsession, and it left me with a newfound respect for the strength of German kitchen utensils.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">46 – The Four Feathers (Zoltan Korda, 1939)&nbsp;–&nbsp;BFI Southbank,&nbsp;35mm</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6xWRuPeW2AI/XgD1sGGKxbI/AAAAAAAAHn4/R2P17LVt8xIhgfbY19mXwOHM4bVRbaaigCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/46%2BThe%2BFour%2BFeathers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1477" height="291" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6xWRuPeW2AI/XgD1sGGKxbI/AAAAAAAAHn4/R2P17LVt8xIhgfbY19mXwOHM4bVRbaaigCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/46%2BThe%2BFour%2BFeathers.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></b></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">The BFI's January/February season was entitled The Golden Age of Alexander Korda, but best film in it was directed by his brother Zoltan. </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Four Feathers</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> is a completely absorbing tale of cowardice, heroism and friendship, superbly shot in Technicolor by Georges Périnal. John Clements' years-long odyssey of self-flagellation and redemption reaches some absurd proportions but it remains thoroughly compelling, and Ralph Richardson's performance is so moving. The sequence in which the blind man and the mute trek across the desert together has a visceral real power, as does the wonderful moment when the white feather falls out of the envelope at dinner, with everyone at the table realising its significance except for Richardson.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>45 – Under the Cherry Moon (Prince, 1986)&nbsp;–&nbsp;Prince Charles Cinema,&nbsp;35mm</b></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DVEkb2g4MbI/XgH2bCi37TI/AAAAAAAAHtI/bz7ru8RhpYQxYWh2hTt7-q4Z-Qva1icGwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/45%2BUnder%2Bthe%2BCherry%2BMoon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="1440" height="207" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DVEkb2g4MbI/XgH2bCi37TI/AAAAAAAAHtI/bz7ru8RhpYQxYWh2hTt7-q4Z-Qva1icGwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/45%2BUnder%2Bthe%2BCherry%2BMoon.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">I can't believe Prince wanted Martin Scorsese to direct this film. I can't believe Kristin Scott Thomas went on to have a very successful career after making this, er, inauspicious debut. I can't believe Steven Berkoff only gave probably the third or fourth hammiest performance in a movie. There are so many things in Prince's indulgent folly that are utterly confounding –&nbsp;it's a film that consists entirely of bizarre non-sequiturs, hysterical close-ups and wildly unmodulated line readings –&nbsp;but there's something irresistible about the whole cheerfully ludicrous picture. As pop star vanity projects go, </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Under the Cherry Moon</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> is marvellous entertainment, and discovering it with a packed house at the Prince Charles Cinema was one of the most enjoyable experiences of the year. How can you not have fun with a film that includes lines like "You selfish son of a biscuit-eater!"</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>44 – Penny Serenade (George Stevens, 1941)&nbsp;–&nbsp;BFI Southbank,&nbsp;35mm</b></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7tfOxSMf-tY/XgH2Ve6U3BI/AAAAAAAAHtA/Nv5iR42illM1rgUJsKSryGtoy9Q0oTyVACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/44%2BPenny%2BSerenade.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="977" data-original-width="1280" height="305" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7tfOxSMf-tY/XgH2Ve6U3BI/AAAAAAAAHtA/Nv5iR42illM1rgUJsKSryGtoy9Q0oTyVACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/44%2BPenny%2BSerenade.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">This movie is not subtle about wanting to jerk the audience's tears by any means necessary, and it really puts its central couple through the ringer. Romance, marriage, pregnancy, earthquake, miscarriage, adoption and death packed into two hours of flashbacks, with these memories being prompted by the records Irene Dunne is placing on the turntable. She and Cary Grant are wonderful together, of course, and they get invaluable support from Edgar Buchanan (who pretty much steals the movie) and Beulah Bondi. </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Penny Serenade</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> can feel a bit disjointed structurally (and I'm not sure I'm buying its depiction of American adoption procedures), but Stevens and his stars play it with great tenderness, and the scenes in which Grant and Dunne are trying to figure out how to deal with the (extremely cute) baby are irresistible.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>43 – Romance on the High Seas (Michael Curtiz, 1948)&nbsp;–&nbsp;BFI Southbank,&nbsp;35mm</b></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-at_OuZeay7U/XgH2Q-JwgBI/AAAAAAAAHs8/p-xmIEtyHbAiUNAFJpf6Ew1VSr-BW5kbgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/43%2BRomance%2Bon%2Bthe%2BHigh%2BSeas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="898" data-original-width="1280" height="280" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-at_OuZeay7U/XgH2Q-JwgBI/AAAAAAAAHs8/p-xmIEtyHbAiUNAFJpf6Ew1VSr-BW5kbgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/43%2BRomance%2Bon%2Bthe%2BHigh%2BSeas.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Directed by Michael Curtiz, with a screenplay by the Epstein brothers and I. A. L. Diamond, and musical sequences directed by Busby Berkeley, </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Romance on the High Seas</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> (titled as </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">It's Magic</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> on this UK print) has quite a pedigree. Its most notable credit is probably for Doris Day, who made her film debut in this picture, and she is an absolute delight from her first minute on screen as the showgirl pretending to be a wealthy heiress on a cruise ship. The musical interludes aren't particularly Busby Berkeley-ish – although some like </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Tourist Trade</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> are very nicely choreographed – but they're consistently good fun, and the whole movie is a brisk and occasionally hilarious entertainment; I particularly loved the gag involving Don DeFore and Oscar Levant&nbsp;getting blind drunk without drinking&nbsp; a drop. The farcical Rio-set ending is great, and the colours really popped on this vintage dye transfer Technicolor print.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>42 – It Started in Paradise (Compton Bennett, 1952)&nbsp;–&nbsp;BFI Southbank,&nbsp;35mm</b></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QFTL6CfBThE/XgH2MXL390I/AAAAAAAAHs4/DBhUD0shwakwih7gHgryOBI4zHMDGAdSACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/42%2BIt%2BStarted%2Bin%2BParadise.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="220" data-original-width="415" height="211" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QFTL6CfBThE/XgH2MXL390I/AAAAAAAAHs4/DBhUD0shwakwih7gHgryOBI4zHMDGAdSACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/42%2BIt%2BStarted%2Bin%2BParadise.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">The print we saw at this screening of </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">It Started in Paradise</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> was apparently the only viable 35mm copy still in existence, and it certainly showed off Jack Cardiff's cinematography to winning effect, although the attempt to create makeup that would look vibrant in Technicolor does give everyone an amusingly rosy-cheeked complexion. </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">It Started in Paradise</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> is a terrifically entertaining melodrama with more than a hint of </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">All About Eve</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, set behind-the-scenes at a London fashion house where the established names are always under threat from a younger designer with fresh ideas. Marghanita Laski's script is hilarious, but it's also sharp and poignant in its portrait of once-rising stars growing stale and losing their way in an inevitable cycle. The performances from Martita Hunt, Jane Hylton and Muriel Pavlow, as three generations of designers, are superb, but the film is almost stolen by Ronald Squire as bitchy critic: "I wish I could remember how to be sincere..."</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><span lang="EN-US">41 – Echoes of Silence + Pestilent City (Peter Emmanuel Goldman, 1964-65)&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span>–&nbsp;Barbican, Digital</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pcSeN9Ci9uc/XgH2HYUWlxI/AAAAAAAAHs0/-Po2feRICVMbcRwz_-YCsre7SdNY85GBwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Echoes%2Band%2BPestilent.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="335" data-original-width="878" height="152" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pcSeN9Ci9uc/XgH2HYUWlxI/AAAAAAAAHs0/-Po2feRICVMbcRwz_-YCsre7SdNY85GBwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Echoes%2Band%2BPestilent.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Two unusual films comprised of 16mm black-and-white footage shot in New York. </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Pestilent City</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> is a portrait of down-and-outs, nocturnal wanderers and lonely souls on streets where vice and murder are rife. Goldman uses slow-motion and negative images to create a haunting, unnerving effect, and the film is a fascinating and atmospheric snapshot of a particular time and place. </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Pestilent City</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> is an intriguing little experiment, but </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Echoes of Silence</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> is something quite extraordinary. Goldman uses the same technique to create a loose episodic narrative in which a group of people drift in and out of sexual relationships. The film is entirely silent except for the jazz soundtrack, and Goldman uses close-ups and offbeat editing rhythms to create a real sense of intimacy, and I loved the way he cut in still photographs into the drama. The film can be a bit meandering and might be a little too long, but its best moments are completely mesmerizing; a sequence in an art gallery with echoes of </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Vertigo</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, an awkward scene in an artist's studio, or a hesitantly erotic encounter between two male friends late at night. The film’s sense of isolation and longing is palpable.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>40 – Def by Temptation (James Bond III, 1990)&nbsp;–&nbsp;BFI Southbank,&nbsp;35mm</b></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_59ZYX30eN8/XgH0zwsQ7_I/AAAAAAAAHsg/Yszrm-PYPrEJfUfuj_fuifFOfItM48FcwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/40%2BDef%2Bby%2BTemptation.jpg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="865" data-original-width="1600" height="215" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_59ZYX30eN8/XgH0zwsQ7_I/AAAAAAAAHsg/Yszrm-PYPrEJfUfuj_fuifFOfItM48FcwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/40%2BDef%2Bby%2BTemptation.jpg.png" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">This movie has a lot more style than coherence, but it's a fascinatingly weird and extremely entertaining vampire romp. Written, directed, produced by and starring James Bond III, the film was obviously put together on a tight budget, but Bond makes brilliant use of some outlandish and inventive effects (I loved the TV killing, which is reminiscent of </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Videodrome</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">), and the great Ernest Dickerson shoots the hell out of every scene. The film has a fine cast, particularly Bill Nunn and Kadeem Hardison, who have some hilarious scenes together in the second half, and Cynthia Bond as the predatory embodiment of temptation. It also boasts lines like "This freaky bed says that you are one hot-natured freakazoid and you can’t wait to jump my bones, because you know I got the key to your pleasures.” This is a wildly uneven film, but it's sincere and full of surprises, and the dedication in the credits by Bond – &nbsp;who apparently never did anything else after this – to his father and grandfather is rather touching: "I'm the last one now."</span><br /><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></b><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">39 – Ponette (Jacques Doillon, 1996)&nbsp;–&nbsp;BFI Southbank,&nbsp;35mm</b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HgQl3moiaMQ/XgH0uqnBjqI/AAAAAAAAHsc/E_IEyrn6sbsv3kNpsO6TUO_zagegCNgRACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/39%2BPonette.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1200" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HgQl3moiaMQ/XgH0uqnBjqI/AAAAAAAAHsc/E_IEyrn6sbsv3kNpsO6TUO_zagegCNgRACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/39%2BPonette.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">It's often hard to judge child performances, and to know how much a child is acting or simply having their behaviour caught on camera, but four-year-old Victoire Thivisol's performance in </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Ponette </i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">– which won her the Best Actress prize at Venice in 1996 – is clearly something special. As the little girl trying to come to terms with her mother's death, her emotions feel utterly authentic throughout, and watching her as she prays to God to let her speak with her mother is unbearably moving. In fact, Doillon gets unaffected and touching performances from all of the children in the film, and he aligns us strictly with their perspective throughout, which makes the subjects of grief and faith seem even more overwhelming and incomprehensible; the best scenes in the movie consist of these kids having various theological discussions. I'm not sure about the way he ends it, which feels pat and cloying in a way the film carefully resists otherwise, but at its best </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Ponette </i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">is honest, compassionate and heartbreaking.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><span lang="EN-US">38 – Pharos of Chaos (Manfred Blank and Wolf-Eckart Bühler, 1983)&nbsp;</span>Cinéma Lumière, Bologna, Digital</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BpDY6Gu4lwY/XgH0p8BXzbI/AAAAAAAAHsY/wymYxTpRRxgWAvLyBpO4gn3ReICJ1stgQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/38%2BPharos%2Bof%2BChaos.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="837" data-original-width="1280" height="261" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BpDY6Gu4lwY/XgH0p8BXzbI/AAAAAAAAHsY/wymYxTpRRxgWAvLyBpO4gn3ReICJ1stgQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/38%2BPharos%2Bof%2BChaos.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">This documentary is a remarkable portrait of a man who is full of guilt and self-loathing, drinking his days away. The filmmakers spent seven days on Sterling Hayden's barge listening to him talk, and the footage they've captured is alternately fascinating, funny and upsetting. It is particularly riveting when Hayden discusses his testimony in front of the HUAC commitee, an act he still feels deep shame over, and he has nothing but contempt for most of the films he made during his career. There are so many amazing moments here, not least Hayden's near-death experience occurring halfway through the shoot, when he fell into the canal while drunk and was fortunate that his son was there to rescue him. Spending two hours in his company can be hard work, but </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Pharos of Chaos</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> is a powerful and sad study of an alcoholic entering the final years of an extraordinary life.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>37 – Union Pacific (Cecil B. DeMille, 1939) BFI Southbank, 35mm</b></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-waOVXwOfqjA/XgH0HwJ7qUI/AAAAAAAAHsI/75muz3vz_II43y53Fz1eN1QMX-Z_oV_qwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/37%2BUnion%2BPacific.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="820" data-original-width="1030" height="317" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-waOVXwOfqjA/XgH0HwJ7qUI/AAAAAAAAHsI/75muz3vz_II43y53Fz1eN1QMX-Z_oV_qwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/37%2BUnion%2BPacific.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Barbara Stanwyck gets a tremendous introduction here, standing tall on top of a train as it races along, but then she opens her mouth and... well, I guess we've found something Barbara can't do. Her Irish accent comes and goes (and it's better when it goes, to be honest) but the love triangle between her, Joel McCrea and Robert Preston is well played by all three. There are lots of great action sequences in </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Union Pacific</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> (The train crashes! The payload robbery! The siege!), terrific character turns all the way down the cast list, and some fun dialogue ("Nobody ain't drinkin', Brett. Ain't you heard? The Irish is teetotalers."), but it's also just a whole lot of stuff, with DeMille clearly setting out to make the train epic to end all train epics and throwing every storyline he had into the mix. At one point I felt certain that the movie was winding down and instead a whole new narrative kicked off! You certainly get plenty of bang for your buck with Cecil.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>36 – My Death is a Mockery (Tony Young, 1952) BFI Southbank, 35mm</b></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kstPmntWrNk/XgH0Ait3hPI/AAAAAAAAHsA/nqamnuzNsnECixIuMg03Gyj1Fglcs6v9gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/36%2BMy%2BDeath%2Bis%2Ba%2BMockery.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="480" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kstPmntWrNk/XgH0Ait3hPI/AAAAAAAAHsA/nqamnuzNsnECixIuMg03Gyj1Fglcs6v9gCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/36%2BMy%2BDeath%2Bis%2Ba%2BMockery.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">The main draw for this brilliantly titled British obscurity was the presence of Kathleen Byron, so it's a shame she gets sidelined halfway through the film and doesn't get a great deal to do when she is on screen. Aside from that disappointment, this is a nifty and taut little thriller about a desperate fisherman drawn into a smuggling scheme and eventually facing the gallows; the film is bookended by him telling his story to the priest before his execution. The narrative is slight but compelling, particularly in the second half when the two main characters seem to gradually switch personalities. Bill Kerr's cocky smuggler becomes increasingly panicked and guilt-ridden, while Donald Houston as the fisherman transforms into a cold-blooded and mercenary crook. Both actors are superb, especially during the final police interrogation scene.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>35 – The Flesh and the Fiends (John Gilling, 1960) BFI Southbank, 35mm</b></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eie5hg-FlgM/XgHz7sJ0VHI/AAAAAAAAHr4/Oj5R3gTkQek0gMIyUI0Vky9iSTmh3Q95ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/35%2BThe%2BFlesh%2Band%2Bthe%2BFiends.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1162" data-original-width="1600" height="290" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eie5hg-FlgM/XgHz7sJ0VHI/AAAAAAAAHr4/Oj5R3gTkQek0gMIyUI0Vky9iSTmh3Q95ACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/35%2BThe%2BFlesh%2Band%2Bthe%2BFiends.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Flesh and the Fiends</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> was pulled out of the archive by the BFI to mark Donald Pleasance’s centenary and he’s on great form as one half of the corpse-trading double-act Burke and Hare, with George Rose playing his partner in crime. Neither actor has top billing, however, as an imperious Peter Cushing starring as their frequent customer Doctor Knox, who provokes angry debates among the medical and religious community with his experiments on dead bodies; "I can show you the heart, my dear reverend” he tells one. "Can you show me the soul?" </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Flesh and the Fiends</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> doesn't soften the bleakness of this story, making Burke and Hare deeply unpleasant characters and depicting a number of violent acts that are genuinely chilling, but what makes the film even more unnerving is its sense of pitch-black humour. It's a very daring tonal balancing act adeptly carried off by writer-director John Gilling and his co-writer Leon Griffiths, and Gilling also uses the camera superbly throughout, aided by Monty Berman’s exceptional black-and-white ‘Scope cinematography. Despite some unconvincing accents, the whole cast delivers the goods, but I particularly enjoyed Billie Whitelaw's passionate and bawdy turn as a prostitute offered the chance of a new life with one of Knox's students.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>34 – Go Fish (Rose Troche, 1994) BFI Southbank, 35mm</b></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--nhB9ibGNXI/XgHz3SM_HzI/AAAAAAAAHr0/3KwMmS1FeAETpwVkvTA_Fjb_GMcbbo8MACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/34%2BGo%2BFish.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1446" height="276" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--nhB9ibGNXI/XgHz3SM_HzI/AAAAAAAAHr0/3KwMmS1FeAETpwVkvTA_Fjb_GMcbbo8MACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/34%2BGo%2BFish.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">This rambling, talky chronicle of various lesbian romances in early '90s New York was presented at the same Sundance festival as </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Clerks</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, a film it bears some similarities with, but it’s a shame Rose Troche’s career didn’t take off in the same way as Kevin Smith’s. Like many US indies of this era,&nbsp;</span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Go Fish</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> is something of a time capsule, with some of Troche's stylistic affectations feeling dated, but I still enjoyed her fondness for jazzy editing rhythms and impressionistic interludes, which gives the film a vibrant energy. The script by Troche and Guinevere Turner is frank and witty as it explores multiple questions relating to lesbian relationships and representation, but mostly it's just fun to spend time with these endearing characters and see how they interact with each other. It's a very funny movie, and the romance between Max and Ely is genuinely sweet.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>33 – Wild Reeds (André Téchiné, 1994) BFI Southbank, 35mm</b></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z6Fy8-F4yAc/XgHzzIVA1II/AAAAAAAAHrw/SnQA1bJqEdc9qWUtqBVQktFDk6klLaN-wCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/33%2BWild%2BReeds.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z6Fy8-F4yAc/XgHzzIVA1II/AAAAAAAAHrw/SnQA1bJqEdc9qWUtqBVQktFDk6klLaN-wCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/33%2BWild%2BReeds.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">One of two entries on this list that originated from the TV series </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, André Téchiné's </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Wild Reeds</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> is a film full of confused, messy feelings and teenagers trying to figure out who they are – learning to bend rather than break – against the backdrop of the Algerian war. I love the way the camera feels so alive to the emotional state of these characters, its movement is always so intuitive and fluid. The young cast play it perfectly, particular Élodie Bouchez, who was such a radiant and refreshing screen presence in this era. This is a gorgeous piece of filmmaking. It's tender, meandering and full of moments that touch the heart in unexpected ways. It was a particular pleasure to enjoy the entrancing The sun-dappled climax on a beautiful 35mm print.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>32 – Ladies of Leisure (Frank Capra, 1930)&nbsp;BFI Southbank,&nbsp;35mm</b></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ONA52skxNfM/XgHzuVE3vRI/AAAAAAAAHrs/Wa6grvnv0esr8dnkqK79uslbpA6QJsmnQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/32%2BLadies%2Bof%2BLeisure.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ONA52skxNfM/XgHzuVE3vRI/AAAAAAAAHrs/Wa6grvnv0esr8dnkqK79uslbpA6QJsmnQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/32%2BLadies%2Bof%2BLeisure.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">This excellent pre-Code was Stanwyck's first collaboration with Frank Capra. She's the party girl picked up by a wealthy artist who sees her as the embodiment of Hope, but who remains largely oblivious as she falls in love with him. It's a tight, snappy screenplay and Stanwyck is entirely great. She's sassy and flirtatious in the film's early stages, but she brings subtle shades and a real emotional punch to her performance as her romance with Ralph Graves develops and the movie shifts into melodrama. Capra gives her some adoring close-ups – you can see why he fell in love with her – but the cast all do fine work, particularly the wonderful Marie Prevost, whose climb up the stairs towards the end lends the film an unexpectedly stirring and heroic climax.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>31 – Her Majesty, Love (Joe May, 1931)&nbsp;BFI Southbank,&nbsp;35mm</b></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0YIFvF3eVlo/XgHzKw1A9kI/AAAAAAAAHrU/XpXWlceUZy8n_54pLdtAAy4qbkRxIBmdwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/31%2BHer%2BMajesty%252C%2BLove.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="524" data-original-width="700" height="298" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0YIFvF3eVlo/XgHzKw1A9kI/AAAAAAAAHrU/XpXWlceUZy8n_54pLdtAAy4qbkRxIBmdwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/31%2BHer%2BMajesty%252C%2BLove.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">A beautifully crafted musical comedy that put me in mind of filmmakers like Mamoulian, Wilder and Lubitsch. Joe May's direction is lively and elegant, brilliantly using the camera to accentuate the comic impact in each intricately constructed set-piece. There are some hilarious gags here – the juggling, the constantly disappearing flowers, the gymnastic musical number – and May gives all of his supporting players ample room to make their characters memorable. An American remake, directed by William Dieterle, was made and released in the same year! I'm curious to see it, although I doubt it will be as charming as Joe May's film.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>30 – Les Bicots-Nègres vos voisins&nbsp;(Med Hondo, 1974)&nbsp;Cinéma Lumière, Bologna,&nbsp;35mm + Fatima: The Algerian Woman of Dakar, 2004) BFI Southbank, 35mm</b></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jbvwgp_18Ys/XgHzHGXOWKI/AAAAAAAAHrM/6BC-LR3ChToGeVY1pn6f-nNASlDWS_qgACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/30%2BLes%2BBicots-n%25C3%25A8gres%252C%2Bvos%2Bvoisins%2B-%2BFatima.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="440" data-original-width="1277" height="137" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jbvwgp_18Ys/XgHzHGXOWKI/AAAAAAAAHrM/6BC-LR3ChToGeVY1pn6f-nNASlDWS_qgACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/30%2BLes%2BBicots-n%25C3%25A8gres%252C%2Bvos%2Bvoisins%2B-%2BFatima.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">In the same year that he passed away, the BFI hosted a seective retrospective of Med Hondo's work, shining a long-overdue spotlight on this brilliant, overlooked figure. It gave me the opportunity to see </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Fatima: The Algerian Woman of Dakar</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, which was the last feature Hondo completed. He uses the rape of an Algerian woman (the superb Amel Djemel) to explore ideas about faith, tradition and identity within Islam communities, as well as questioning the possibility of a united Africa. Self-funded and barely distributed, the film suffered the same fate as too many of his pictures, including the one I caught in Bologna. </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Les Bicots-Nègres vos voisins</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">&nbsp;is a provocative, confrontational and stimulating exploration of African cinema, colonialism, capitalism, socialism, immigrant labour, exploitation, racism and more. The film unfolds in a series of arguments and sketches that give us an awful lot to digest, and it sometimes feels like too much, but what keeps it from getting bogged down in rhetoric is Hondo's aggressive and imaginative style. I wish Med Hondo had been able to make more films, but the ones we have are all special and deserve to be more widely distributed.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>29 – Finishing School (Wanda Tuchock and George Nicholls Jr., 1934) BFI Southbank, 35mm</b></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cgNH4x4OtdQ/XgHzCuFjwDI/AAAAAAAAHrI/otOP8L-2e1EOUGMRYg0mBE-cO-rHydovQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/29%2BFinishing%2BSchool.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1113" data-original-width="1403" height="316" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cgNH4x4OtdQ/XgHzCuFjwDI/AAAAAAAAHrI/otOP8L-2e1EOUGMRYg0mBE-cO-rHydovQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/29%2BFinishing%2BSchool.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Released just a few months before the Hays Code was rigidly enforced, </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Finishing School</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> is a portrait of bad girls that snuck in just under the wire. Frances Dee is the young woman sent to a very exclusive and oppressive girls' school to learn proper etiquette, only to be led astray by Ginger Rogers and fall in love with Bruce Cabot. They drink, they smoke, they stay out all night partying and Dee even ends up getting pregnant out of wedlock – it’s little wonder </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Finishing School</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> earned a place on the Legion of Decency’s ‘condemned’ list. There are great performances all round, including Billie Burke as Dee's self-obsessed mother, and Irene Franklin as the struggling stage actress hired by the girls to be their fake chaperone (“One step lower, and I’ll be in the movies,” she complains), but it's Ginger Rogers who grabs all the best lines. "It’s like putting a saddle on a pekingese, but here it is," she says when loaning her bra to a friend, and after considering the 'proper' young men being lined up for them she observes, "If you took all the hair off their combined chests, you couldn’t make a wig for a grape!”</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>28 – A Single Girl (Benoît Jacquot, 1995) BFI Southbank, 35mm</b></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kBI3ZV7TfII/XgHy-WepfUI/AAAAAAAAHrE/TSy311N5KawXRddDbo9gs0xX8UxmoGTugCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/28%2BA%2BSingle%2BGirl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kBI3ZV7TfII/XgHy-WepfUI/AAAAAAAAHrE/TSy311N5KawXRddDbo9gs0xX8UxmoGTugCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/28%2BA%2BSingle%2BGirl.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Although this film is bookended by long dialogue scenes, what really elevates it is the almost real-time middle hour that follows Valérie (Virginie Ledoyen) on her first day working in a hotel. It's a masterclass in quotidian filmmaking. The camera tracks Valérie as she marches up and down the corridors, fulfilling room service orders, negotiating difficult interactions with both guests and colleagues, and stealing away for a few private moments whenever she can. Ledoyen is absolutely mesmerising, giving a thoughtful, guarded performance with some wonderfully expressive glances and body language. Outstanding camerawork and editing that never calls attention to itself and keeps the film flowing seamlessly. The epilogue feels like a slightly awkward fit, even though it's quite lovely and Ledoyen looks even more breathtakingly gorgeous in it.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>27 – India Song (Marguerite Duras, 1975)&nbsp;Ciné Lumière,&nbsp;35mm + The Lorry (Marguerite Duras, 1977) Regent Street Cinema, 35mm</b></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sdRxoLGObAM/XgHy5DGGIKI/AAAAAAAAHrA/zyTiezJlNgEceGQeWAfnGt1--mXAsJI5gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Duras%2BDouble.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="335" data-original-width="923" height="145" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sdRxoLGObAM/XgHy5DGGIKI/AAAAAAAAHrA/zyTiezJlNgEceGQeWAfnGt1--mXAsJI5gCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Duras%2BDouble.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Two very unusual films by Marguerite Duras film, both of which largely take place in a single location. </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">India Song</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> is often inscrutable but largely entrancing, with the way the characters move through empty spaces - often reflected in mirrors – being reminiscent of </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Last Year at Marienbad</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">. As the actors dance in front of the camera, every conversation takes place off screen, with the narration giving it the feel of a fable. It's a film of stillness and ennui, although the soundtrack's hushed murmuring is often disrupted by Michael Lonsdale's anguished howls. </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Lorry</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> is something completely different, consisting of Duras and Gérard Depardieu sitting around a table, reading the script for her unmade film and discussing what it might have been. Their conversations can be frustratingly cryptic and fragmented, and often repetitive, but I really enjoyed the rhythm of the film as it cut between the internal and external shots. I'm looking forward to discovering more of Duras's work as this retrospective organised by Another Gaze continues into 2020.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>26 – L'homme du large (Marcel L'Herbier, 1920) BFI Southbank, 35mm</b></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ugGmRv1ilK0/XgHwgOmJzQI/AAAAAAAAHqo/UinMfKHM76Y1rbJoKl9N4wwx13C4xI1IACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/26%2BL%2527homme%2Bdu%2Blarge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1068" data-original-width="1400" height="305" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ugGmRv1ilK0/XgHwgOmJzQI/AAAAAAAAHqo/UinMfKHM76Y1rbJoKl9N4wwx13C4xI1IACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/26%2BL%2527homme%2Bdu%2Blarge.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">This adaptation of Balzac's story about a proud fisherman and his ne'er-do-well son is a thrilling exercise in style. Everything from the framing and editing to the tinting and intertitles is crafted with imagination and expressive intent; he even incorporates text within the frame rather than keeping the action and intertitles separate. The rugged landscape is brilliantly utilised and L'Herbier creates a number of poetic and potent images. Story-wise, </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">L'homme du large</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> plays like a classic silent melodrama, although it did feel like the film was heading towards a much darker climax than the one we eventually got, and it came as no surprise to discover afterwards that the ending is changed from Balzac's original. Despite this it's unquestionably a remarkable piece of filmmaking and one of the singular achievements of the silent era.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>25 – Shakespeare Wallah (James Ivory, 1965) BFI Southbank, Digital</b></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ogc7kSP82F8/XgHwb-PQQwI/AAAAAAAAHqg/ssTMZ44g3YYs7FUnXl5STzCARFZB-bmtwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/25%2BShakespeare%2BWallah.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ogc7kSP82F8/XgHwb-PQQwI/AAAAAAAAHqg/ssTMZ44g3YYs7FUnXl5STzCARFZB-bmtwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/25%2BShakespeare%2BWallah.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">An early film from Merchant-Ivory, and one of their best. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's script is affecting both as a story of young lovers and as a portrait of a nomadic acting family reaching the end of the road, but it's also perceptive on class, culture and changing times. It's a playful, romantic and melancholy film, and James Ivory's elegant direction ensures it flows beautifully from one captivating scene to the next. The cast is flawless (notably a scene-stealing Madhur Jaffrey, who gives depth and complexity to what could have been a one-note comical diva role) and Satyajit Ray contributes a lovely score. But the main reason I fell in love with this film – and the reason I'm so delighted I caught it on the big screen – is the cinematography by Subrata Mitra. Even by his own high standards, this is a jaw-droppingly luminous and atmospheric film, with one breathtaking sequence in which two lovers walk along a mountain path enshrouded in mist recalling Ray and Mitra's earlier masterpiece </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Kanchenjunga</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>24 – Personal Problems (Bill Gunn, 1980) Birkbeck University, Digital</b></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EB7-N5fnVJs/XgHwX7du2AI/AAAAAAAAHqc/NwrE-CcA23kz300xtxKcCx-mg65zQqcDwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/24%2BPersonal%2BProblems.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1384" height="311" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EB7-N5fnVJs/XgHwX7du2AI/AAAAAAAAHqc/NwrE-CcA23kz300xtxKcCx-mg65zQqcDwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/24%2BPersonal%2BProblems.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><i>Personal Problems</i> was shot on&nbsp;</span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">U-Matic video and i</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">t takes a while to get used to the video quality, but I quickly became absorbed into this uncategorisable two-part ensemble piece. In fact, the low-grade images occasionally work to the film's advantage, giving scenes an impressionistic quality as characters move through them, with their actions leaving ghostly traces or colours congealing into a blocky smear. I particularly loved the way the water looked shimmering in the sunlight in the second half. The narrative, apparently developed through improvisation, is quite wayward and uneven - and I was sometimes perplexed by the editing choices - but the performances across the board are just astonishingly good. They're funny, raw, complex and utterly authentic. Gunn switches focus a few times and you get the sense that every one of these characters is rich enough to be worth following. I thought of people like Cassavetes and Mike Leigh as I watched it, but <i>Personal Problems</i> really is its own unique thing.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>23 – On to Reno (James Cruze, 1928) Cinema Museum, 35mm</b></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-THaVhW0vn-A/XgHwTXGi1CI/AAAAAAAAHqU/Cj8oYd5taCsiojSy45KFN8aTvMqPfLJOgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/23%2BOn%2Bto%2BReno.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="337" data-original-width="600" height="223" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-THaVhW0vn-A/XgHwTXGi1CI/AAAAAAAAHqU/Cj8oYd5taCsiojSy45KFN8aTvMqPfLJOgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/23%2BOn%2Bto%2BReno.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">This very entertaining divorce caper is a real obscurity so it was a rare treat to see it projected from an excellent BFI print as part of the Cinema Museum's Silent Film Weekend. Marie Prevost is the young woman trying to earn some extra cash by pretending to be a woman filing for divorce in Reno; a premise that leads to all manner of farcical misunderstandings. There is much running in and out of bedrooms, a hilarious sequence in which a naked man has to hide in a swimming pool, and it climaxes with a chase involving two married couples and dozens of divorcées. I loved the portrait of Reno as a haven for women who have left their husbands, including a women-only bar called The Alimony Club, where they partake in violent Apache dances with a male dummy. Marie Prevost is on typically charming and funny form as the main character, but Ned Sparks' hysterical mugging steals the movie.</span><br /><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></b><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">22 – Moonfleet (Fritz Lang, 1955) Forum des Images, Paris, 35mm</b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WVYg33pE5e0/XgHwNTqy4OI/AAAAAAAAHqM/Qa-I1mQM3VkiOutbUFFzuofaiyhsxi-_gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/22%2BMoonfleet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WVYg33pE5e0/XgHwNTqy4OI/AAAAAAAAHqM/Qa-I1mQM3VkiOutbUFFzuofaiyhsxi-_gCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/22%2BMoonfleet.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">He may have stated that CinemaScope was only good for “snakes and funerals” in </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Le Mépris</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, but Fritz Lang used the wide screen brilliantly in </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Moonfleet</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, his first film in the format. I particularly loved his blocking in the scenes set in the smugglers' den, and the way the smugglers were introduced with their faces all lined up and filling the screen. After a series of tough American crime films, this swashbuckling family adventure might have seemed like an unusual assignment for Lang, but his knack for unexpected bursts of violence and stark, disturbing imagery makes this a much darker and more atmospheric affair than it might have been in other hands. There’s something haunting and ominous in the film, and a real sense of impending death, that gives it an unexpected gravity; it made me wish that Lang had tried his hand at a Dickens adaptation. This is surely one of the director’s most underrated films, although that’s apparently not the case in France, where I saw it projected from a beautiful 35mm print – Cahiers du Cinéma named it as one of their top 100 films in 2008.</span><br /><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></b><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">21 – No Man's Land (Victor Trivas, 1931) BFI Southbank, 35mm</b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qwmRb6sfaXk/XgHwI-FzVlI/AAAAAAAAHqE/su-O2ElmABQM3gvOdidPxuWUlPbFhJchACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/21%2BNo%2BMan%2527s%2BLand.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1402" data-original-width="1600" height="350" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qwmRb6sfaXk/XgHwI-FzVlI/AAAAAAAAHqE/su-O2ElmABQM3gvOdidPxuWUlPbFhJchACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/21%2BNo%2BMan%2527s%2BLand.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">This remarkable film traps five disparate soldiers - a German, a Frenchman, a Brit, a black American and a shell-shocked Jew - in a trench together in 1918. The first half of the film shows us each man's contented pre-war life, brilliantly using match-cuts to tie them together, and while the dialogue scenes in the second half can be a little stiff, the film's commitment to authenticity and the sincerity of its plea for peace is very affecting. The most impressive thing about </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">No Man's Land</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> is Victor Trivas's thrillingly ambitious filmmaking. The film is full of striking, visceral and haunting imagery, the editing is inventive and powerful, and the sound design - just a few years removed from the silent era - is incredibly impressive. It's surely one of the most powerful films ever made about The Great War.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><span lang="EN-US">20 – Muna Moto (Jean-Pierre Dikongué-Pipa, 1975)&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span>Cinéma Lumière, Bologna, Digital</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pB4lDRBP6n8/XgHwEobptHI/AAAAAAAAHqA/SMZxI5aUrPkDlIpDBD4EfNmoy_A0r723QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/20%2BMuna%2BMoto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pB4lDRBP6n8/XgHwEobptHI/AAAAAAAAHqA/SMZxI5aUrPkDlIpDBD4EfNmoy_A0r723QCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/20%2BMuna%2BMoto.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Muna Moto</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> has a gripping opening scene, depicting a man running from a crowd with a child in his arms, before it flashes back to show us how he reached this desperate point. We learn about his futile attempts to raise the dowry that will allow him to marry the girl he loves, before his wealthy uncle could claim her as his fifth wife, and Jean-Pierre Dikongué-Pipa's film is a tale of thwarted love in a deeply misogynistic society, where women are bought and sold, and will be beaten if they dare to speak up or disobey. It's a tough but lyrical piece of filmmaking, and beautifully crafted. Dikongué-Pipa makes superb use of subjective shots and close-ups (one can't help wondering if Barry Jenkins has seen this film) and the editing is hugely impressive. </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Muna Moto</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> is another vital restoration from the African Film Heritage Project.</span><br /><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></b><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">19 – The Ancient Law (E.A. Dupont, 1923) BFI Southbank, Digital</b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eX15zWum66o/XgHv_utrLgI/AAAAAAAAHp4/g_78ZZwrnu4sf78QzYquwQqqOEg1ty9XgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/19%2BThe%2BAncient%2BLaw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1204" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eX15zWum66o/XgHv_utrLgI/AAAAAAAAHp4/g_78ZZwrnu4sf78QzYquwQqqOEg1ty9XgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/19%2BThe%2BAncient%2BLaw.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">E.A. Dupont's tale of a young Jew pursuing his dream of becoming an actor is an extraordinary film about faith and art, ambition and devotion, prejudice and assimilation. The storytelling is patient and intelligent, and the performances are superb, particularly Avram Morewski, who is so moving as the old Rabbi. The focus on tradition, rituals and behaviour helps Dupont create what feels like a remarkably authentic portrait of 19th century Jewish life, just as the theatre scenes allow us to glimpse various strata of Viennese society. The brilliant art direction was by Alfred Junge - who later became a Powell &amp; Pressburger mainstay - and the level of detail in his work is shown off by this outstanding restoration, while Dupont's direction (though not as showy as his </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Moulin Rouge</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, another first-time viewing this year) gives us so many beautiful and haunting images. It's an incredible film.</span><br /><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></b><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">18 – The Mad Miss Manton (Leigh Jason, 1938)&nbsp;BFI Southbank,&nbsp;35mm</b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o60S4v-U6FA/XgHv6fbWmNI/AAAAAAAAHp0/qABF2mIxAkYkzuH4mxZTzmDXG7s95wQmQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/18%2BThe%2BMad%2BMiss%2BManton.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o60S4v-U6FA/XgHv6fbWmNI/AAAAAAAAHp0/qABF2mIxAkYkzuH4mxZTzmDXG7s95wQmQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/18%2BThe%2BMad%2BMiss%2BManton.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Three years before </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Lady Eve</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda had a love-hate relationship in this undervalued screwball gem. She's the flighty socialite who keeps stumbling over dead bodies with her gang of female friends, he's the newspaper editor pursuing her, and the film is almost stolen by Sam Levene as a dyspeptic police lieutenant. Leigh Jason's direction is so fluid - brilliantly orchestrating multiple crowd scenes - and his comic timing is so sure, it makes me wonder why I've never heard his name before now, but the film has impressive credits in other areas. The zinging screenplay is by Philip Epstein and Nicholas Musuraca shoots it like a noir. It's a terrific, frequently hilarious comedy that really should be more celebrated than it is.</span><br /><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></b><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">17 – Baara (Souleymane Cissé, 1978)&nbsp;Cinéma Lumière, Bologna,&nbsp;35mm</b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fXmdWZd-AOQ/XgHv2F2-UrI/AAAAAAAAHps/RHQ7UXPqKnUSAmxJNmEbdw6sVQqwzyCwwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/17%2BBaara.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fXmdWZd-AOQ/XgHv2F2-UrI/AAAAAAAAHps/RHQ7UXPqKnUSAmxJNmEbdw6sVQqwzyCwwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/17%2BBaara.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">The English title for Souleymane Cissé’s film is </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Work</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, and his examination of labour from a variety of perspectives details a whole social and economic fabric, and the cycles of exploitation and corruption inherent within it. So many scenes in this film hinge on a negotiation, or some discussion of capital and debt. It's urgent, powerful filmmaking that feels completely authentic. I was so riveted by Baara I didn’t mind the occasional flaws in the very rare 35mm print (the best the festival could locate after a very long search) but Cissé’s disappointment with the quality of this presentation dominated the post-film Q&amp;A. One hopes this film is next on the World Cinema Foundation's restoration list. It certainly feels as relevant as ever and deserves to be seen.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></b><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">1</span></b><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">6 – In Jenen Tagen (Helmut Käutner, 1949)&nbsp;Cinéma Lumière, Bologna,&nbsp;35mm</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ep4_P2hX7Jk/XgHvxRa5z9I/AAAAAAAAHpo/sgNTzs42ZhoBfJFnqg81gmMBtbc3SXYiACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/16%2BIn%2BJenen%2BTagen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1111" data-original-width="1600" height="277" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ep4_P2hX7Jk/XgHvxRa5z9I/AAAAAAAAHpo/sgNTzs42ZhoBfJFnqg81gmMBtbc3SXYiACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/16%2BIn%2BJenen%2BTagen.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">A fascinating high-concept film from Helmut Käutner, who was one of my favourite discoveries in Bologna 2017. The film is narrated by an old wreck of a car who recounts memories of its seven owners, and through these vignettes the film tells the story of twelve years in Nazi Germany, from Hitler seizing control in January 1933, through the persecution of the Jews, and up to the end of the war. It's an early attempt by the Germans to reckon with their recent history, and it's an ambitious one, asking nothing less than what it means to be human. It's easy to see this film becoming gimmicky or preachy in lesser hands, but Käutner is so good at finding these delicate moments of humanity and coaxing truthful performances from his entire cast, and his use of the camera is always so fluid and intelligent. A remarkable film from a director who continues to grow in my estimation.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>15 – Life Begins Tomorrow (Werner Hochbaum, 1933) BFI Southbank, 35mm</b></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5ORtFDchCuw/XgHvnXmkevI/AAAAAAAAHpg/e885EuqUTsoqAug95qNhHcmi3X26aU9YQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/15%2BLife%2BBegins%2BTomorrow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1193" data-original-width="1600" height="297" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5ORtFDchCuw/XgHvnXmkevI/AAAAAAAAHpg/e885EuqUTsoqAug95qNhHcmi3X26aU9YQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/15%2BLife%2BBegins%2BTomorrow.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">This is a sound film but Werner Hochbaum has very little use for dialogue. He is a man determined to tell his story in purely visual terms, and to try out some new technique in almost every scene; at one point he gives us a point-of-view shot of a guy playing a violin while watching himself in a mirror. The protagonist is a man released from jail after five years and Hochbaum expresses his anxiety and turmoil in a variety of ways; a series of quick cuts and skewed close-ups as he returns to the city, for example, or a brilliant montage of gossiping neighbours set to a creepy chorus of whispers. I really liked the way the film gradually revealed the nature of Robert's crime through flashbacks too, and how it maintained a degree of ambiguity and tension as he considered repeating the act late on. It's an incredibly invigorating and impressive piece of work.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>14 – Aventurera (Alberto Gout, 1950) BFI Southbank, Digital</b></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-W-SCLJ3jT4g/XgHvg28_loI/AAAAAAAAHpc/Ki-ANvzRE8Q_HAAnLFkGebRxMq7OAlpdgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/14%2BAventurera.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="467" data-original-width="830" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-W-SCLJ3jT4g/XgHvg28_loI/AAAAAAAAHpc/Ki-ANvzRE8Q_HAAnLFkGebRxMq7OAlpdgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/14%2BAventurera.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Ninón Sevilla was the star of </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Victims of Sin</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, one of my major discoveries of 2018, and this earlier Rumberas film was a major 2019 highlight. This time she plays a young woman forced into prostitution who gradually turns the tables on those who put her there, with the film unfolding as a cascading series of wild plot twists, including one humdinger halfway through that briefly turns the film into hilarious comedy of manners. </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Aventurera </i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">has a surplus of style, energy and surprises, and it even throws in a few extravagant dance numbers – what more could you ask for? It also boasts another tremendous star turn from Ninón Sevilla. She's such an expressive and impulsive performer, and the venomous looks tossed back-and-forth between her and Andrea Palma are priceless. It's a stupendously entertaining film.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>13 – Wavelength (Michael Snow, 1967) Tate Modern, 16mm</b></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LvqD7hZd1sk/XgHvcHbpfoI/AAAAAAAAHpY/_ekjA74LooAf0OGICvOFg7JQ5utwyJztwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/13%2BWavelength.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="855" data-original-width="1146" height="297" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LvqD7hZd1sk/XgHvcHbpfoI/AAAAAAAAHpY/_ekjA74LooAf0OGICvOFg7JQ5utwyJztwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/13%2BWavelength.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">As life and death happens in the margins of the film, Snow's mechanical eye moves inexorably forward, ending with a magical awakening of a still image. The pitch of the audio cycles upwards until it reaches a level that had my nerves on edge and made my teeth ache (but in a good way). It made me think of </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">La Jetée</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> and </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Blow Up</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, but it's a wholly unique experience. A mesmerising and fascinating exploration of of cinematic space, it was an extraordinary privilege to see it for the first time projected on 16mm. This particular screening was followed by the world premiere of Snow's new work </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Waivelength</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, a collaboration with Mani Mazinani that acts as a kind of inversion of the original film and had a soundtrack specifically designed for Tate's Dolby Atmos setup. Whereas </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Wavelength </i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">made me feel anxious, </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Waivelength </i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">had a more inviting rhythm that even made me feel a bit drowsy (but in a good way).</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>12 – U.S. Go Home (Claire Denis, 1994) BFI Southbank, Digital</b></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3-Yfuk3oE5k/XgHuiHKD76I/AAAAAAAAHpM/KIuXBlRgijsPaG3_AOR_GjEj83JtLEUZgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/12%2BU.S.%2BGo%2BHome.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3-Yfuk3oE5k/XgHuiHKD76I/AAAAAAAAHpM/KIuXBlRgijsPaG3_AOR_GjEj83JtLEUZgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/12%2BU.S.%2BGo%2BHome.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">This is pretty much a perfect film. It captures so many subtle, complex emotions in a running time of just over an hour. Every shot seems to communicate so much about these characters as they try to enter an adult world that they're not quite ready for. Impeccable performances from the young cast, particularly the stunning Alice Houri, a wonderful Vincent Gallo cameo ("I'm offering you my last Coca-Cola, Alain." "I'm a Communist. I don't drink Coca-Cola."), and an insanely good soundtrack; although the rights issues surrounding that soundtrack are partly responsible for the film’s lack of widespread availability. Given the fact that this episode and André Téchiné’s <i>Wild Reeds</i>both earned a place on this list, and that I’ve loved the other two films from <i>Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge</i> that I’ve seen (Chantal Akerman's <i>Portrait of a Young Girl in the Late ’60s in Brussels</i> and Olivier Assayas's extended version of <i>Cold Water</i>) are wonderful too, I’m desperate to catch up with the rest of this series.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>11 – Spring Night, Summer Night (Joseph L. Anderson, 1967).&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></b></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>Cinema Arlecchino, Bologna, Digital</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bpjLI3-vkS0/XgHtwYo-FBI/AAAAAAAAHpA/gkjsWVZuCDQasN_WX-kZmiLBicnRdxKyQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/11%2BSpring%2BNight%252C%2BSummer%2BNight.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bpjLI3-vkS0/XgHtwYo-FBI/AAAAAAAAHpA/gkjsWVZuCDQasN_WX-kZmiLBicnRdxKyQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/11%2BSpring%2BNight%252C%2BSummer%2BNight.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><i>Spring Night, Summer Night&nbsp;</i>was dropped from abruptly dropped from the 1968 New York Film Festival to make way for John Cassavetes' <i>Faces</i>, and it subsequently slipped into complete obscurity. I'm glad it's finally having a revival. It's a story of incest, but it's also a story about an unhappy family, a dead-end town, and a way of life. Anderson and his co-screenwriters Franklin Miller and Doug Rapp respect the dimensions and the ambiguity of their four main characters, each of whom has their own unfulfilled desires, their own private sadness and regret. John Crawford as the father initially comes off as a gruff, one-note bully, until a stunning late monologue, which is one of many moments that made me catch my breath. (For another, consider the pause between "I knew what I was doing" and "I could have stopped you.") The black-and-white cinematography is astounding, making the film feel both authentic and timeless, and Larue Hall's performance is an all-timer. A true revelation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>10 – The Devil Thumbs a Ride (Felix E. Feist, 1947) </b></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>Cinema Jolly, Bologna, 35mm</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-akxshiaEOo8/XgHtSrDZBwI/AAAAAAAAHow/-b8KoEIQNJgaf9W6WWffrMOvK7OQMDnagCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/10%2BThe%2BDevil%2BThumbs%2Ba%2BRide.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="903" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-akxshiaEOo8/XgHtSrDZBwI/AAAAAAAAHow/-b8KoEIQNJgaf9W6WWffrMOvK7OQMDnagCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/10%2BThe%2BDevil%2BThumbs%2Ba%2BRide.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">I had the pleasure of discovering a number of terrific noir films by Felix E. Feist in Bologna this year. I loved Lee J. Cobb’s performance and the haunting finale in The Man Who Cheated Himself, and the way Feist brought a more classical studio style to Tomorrow is Another Day without compromising on moral complexity. But the title of this strand in the Il Cinema Ritrovato programme was 'Brutal, Nasty and Short,' and no film lived up to that billing better than The Devil Thumbs a Ride. It’s a brilliant comic thriller that keeps upending audience expectations. Running for a shade over an hour, there's not an ounce of fat on the film, but Feist manages to pack in so many fun characters and side plots without it feeling rushed or overstuffed. It's a perfectly crafted and frequently very funny movie, with a magnificent mean bastard performance from Lawrence Tierney. It’s played on a double-bill with the tense and brutal The Threat, but this film alone is worthy of inclusion on the list.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">9 – Smoking / No Smoking (Alain Resnais, 1993)&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Ciné Lumière,&nbsp;</span></b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>35mm</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wQmduQQ5AMQ/XgHtJOON7II/AAAAAAAAHoo/eBGiEdZioCkDMKT6VwIYzYGTW5KgTUQwwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/9%2BSmoking%2B-%2BNo%2BSmoking.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wQmduQQ5AMQ/XgHtJOON7II/AAAAAAAAHoo/eBGiEdZioCkDMKT6VwIYzYGTW5KgTUQwwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/9%2BSmoking%2B-%2BNo%2BSmoking.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Nine characters, five hours, two films, two actors and one extraordinary experience. Alain Resnais’s adaptation of Alan Ayckbourn’s <i>Intimate Exchanges</i> is one of his most ingenious productions. Resnais constantly rewinds the film to explore different possibilities within the narrative's multiple branches, asking “But what if…?” at every juncture, and he leaps ahead in time by five days, five weeks or even five years. There’s so much invention in the way Resnais stages each episode, with an actor disappearing from view as one character only to arrive seconds later as another, and I loved the theatrical backdrops that reinforce a sense of artifice around the whole production. But amid this artificial construction and the often wacky and outlandishly comical scenarios,</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">&nbsp;the amazing Sabine Azéma and Pierre Arditi keep Smoking/No Smoking grounded in a sense of truth and humanity, giving pitch-perfect performances as every one of the characters.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>8 – 3 Bad Men (John Ford, 1926) Cinema Jolly, Bologna, Digital</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-22OvZTaf0p8/XgHtFY7uIyI/AAAAAAAAHok/ZLnWa0M-OEoU3AC2QfWw9-S5vHmb_aKcQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/8%2BThree%2BBad%2BMen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="945" data-original-width="1520" height="247" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-22OvZTaf0p8/XgHtFY7uIyI/AAAAAAAAHok/ZLnWa0M-OEoU3AC2QfWw9-S5vHmb_aKcQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/8%2BThree%2BBad%2BMen.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">This was John Ford's last western before he redefined the genre with </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Stagecoach </i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">thirteen years later, </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">3 Bad Men</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> is a dazzling display of his effortless mastery. The poster boasts a cast of 25,000 and Ford seems determined to show us all of them during the epic land rush sequence, which begins with a line of horses stretching endlessly into the horizon, but he gives weight to this spectacle by making us care so deeply about the characters in the film's first half. The black-hatted thieves grow into some of Ford's most endearing heroes, while the white-hatted sheriff emerges as a despicable villain, and the last stand of these 'bad men' is so moving. Ford's composition is consistently breathtaking, and from the burning church scene onwards, </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">3 Bad Men</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> simply serves up one staggering sequence after another. It’s an astounding and deeply moving film, and it has instantly become one of my favourite Ford pictures.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">7 – Film Without a Title (Rudolf Jugert, 1948)&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Cinéma Lumière, Bologna,&nbsp;</span></b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>35mm</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0UfhrKRz_K8/XgHtBfddF-I/AAAAAAAAHoc/lize7uXneVEyJmmUgIjAYulz06Pz_IsKwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/7%2BFilm%2BWithout%2Ba%2BTitle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0UfhrKRz_K8/XgHtBfddF-I/AAAAAAAAHoc/lize7uXneVEyJmmUgIjAYulz06Pz_IsKwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/7%2BFilm%2BWithout%2Ba%2BTitle.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">One of the most striking aspects of the Il Cinema Ritrovato strand exploring filmmaking in postwar Germany was how imaginative and playful a lot of the films were. Far from the neo-realist ‘rubble films’ one might expect, they instead took unexpected and bold formal approaches to dealing with the pain and historical significance of this period. Consider </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Film Without a Title</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, an ingenious romantic comedy that begins by asking if it's possible or even right to make such a lighthearted film in the immediate aftermath. As three filmmakers (including Willy Fritsch, making a very funny cameo as himself) debate this question, we see the romance play out and get rewritten multiple times. The inventive touch of screenwriter Helmut Käutner is evident in the way the film adroit toys with genre conventions, while Rudolf Jugert directs with a brisk energy and sense of humour.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>6 – Where Chimneys Are Seen (Heinosuke Gosho, 1953) ICA, 35mm</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j266ZZvGXE4/XgHs9fOMAzI/AAAAAAAAHoY/5gzOVmhQUpwqROH2YpeIBwsv8w7GTAIOwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/6%2BWhere%2BChimneys%2BAre%2BSeen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j266ZZvGXE4/XgHs9fOMAzI/AAAAAAAAHoY/5gzOVmhQUpwqROH2YpeIBwsv8w7GTAIOwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/6%2BWhere%2BChimneys%2BAre%2BSeen.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">This is surely one of the greatest films about postwar Japan; a portrait of people attempting to build new lives while facing economic hardship and carrying past traumas. Gosho's direction is so fluid and precise, framing his shots with real wit and imagination and filling them with wonderful character details. His command of the film's tone is impeccable too, ensuring it remains consistently funny even as it explores complex emotional territory. I loved the central metaphor of the factory chimneys in the centre of town, which look different to each person depending on where you are and how you look at them. It's a beautifully acted film - with each member of the central quartet doing subtle, empathetic and expressive work - but Kinuyo Tanaka gives a particularly magnificent performance. A masterpiece.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>5 – State Fair (Henry King, 1933) + Wait 'til the Sun Shines, Nellie (Henry King, 1952) Cinema Jolly, Bologna, 35mm</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tVdM5YZQWI8/XgHs5Zw7sjI/AAAAAAAAHoU/kLQyKEATtKYuRh_fFu2reOVohg9YVPcLQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/5%2BState%2BFair%2B-%2BWait%2BUntil%2Bthe%2BSun%2BShines%2BNellie.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="297" data-original-width="815" height="145" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tVdM5YZQWI8/XgHs5Zw7sjI/AAAAAAAAHoU/kLQyKEATtKYuRh_fFu2reOVohg9YVPcLQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/5%2BState%2BFair%2B-%2BWait%2BUntil%2Bthe%2BSun%2BShines%2BNellie.JPG" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Henry King's long career covered every genre, and the Bologna retrospective included a number of his great westerns and war films, but I think he was at his best with these nostalgic visions of a bygone America. In </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">State Fair</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, King’s direction immerses us in the energy and excitement of the fair, as two innocent farmer's children pursue affairs with more worldly lovers. It’s a beautifully crafted film, keeping multiple stories on the go at once, traversing comedy and heartache, and closing with a dazzlingly romantic final shot. </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">State Fair</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> was an early highlight of this year’s Il Cinema Ritrovato, but </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Wait 'til the Sun Shines, Nellie</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> was an even greater revelation. It’s a bizarre picture that seems to shift genres three or four times as it tells the story of fifty years in the life of a country, a town, and a man. It’s an idealised vision of early 20th century America, but one marked by a potent sense of melancholy, loss and regret as</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Ben Halper’s refusal to yield or consider others invites tragedy into his life. Enjoying Leon Shamroy’s dazzling Technicolor cinematography on one of the best prints I saw all year was an incredible experience too. King remains a sorely undervalued director.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>4 – Tonka of the Gallows (Karel Anton, 1930) Phoenix Cinema, Digital</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_HMZVd7vds0/XgHs1LtUOjI/AAAAAAAAHoQ/Rc9Fnu5I_FQYu6ugfsPr5NILY_rf592IgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/4%2BTonka%2Bof%2Bthe%2BGallows.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1290" height="333" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_HMZVd7vds0/XgHs1LtUOjI/AAAAAAAAHoQ/Rc9Fnu5I_FQYu6ugfsPr5NILY_rf592IgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/4%2BTonka%2Bof%2Bthe%2BGallows.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">This was an early Czechoslovakian sound film, with a few lines of dialogue and a couple of songs by Ita Rina being synchronised on the soundtrack, although it plays primarily as a silent film and we saw it accompanied superbly by Stephen Horne, who briefly paused for Rina’s contributions. Anyway, who needs dialogue when you have a face as stunning as Ita Rina and direction as expressive as Karel Anton gives us here? <i>Tonka of the Gallows</i> is the story of a woman ostracised for spending a night in prison with a condemned man before his execution, it's a brilliantly crafted film with a thundering emotional force. There's so much tenderness and pain in Rina’s lead performance, and Karel Anton's filmmaking is breathtaking, particularly during the build-up to the execution which boasts some ingenious shot and editing choices. The film builds towards a climax that I found completely shattering.&nbsp;</span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Tonka of the Gallows</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">&nbsp;is&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">a magnificent and haunting film.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>3 – La maison des bois (Maurice Pialat, 1971) BFI Southbank, Digital</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Jm0_FrpCbXM/XgHswCMiQNI/AAAAAAAAHoM/WprQccy3sz82VHIz5cTmNyK3s-tNNArfgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/3%2BLa%2Bmaison%2Bdes%2Bbois.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Jm0_FrpCbXM/XgHswCMiQNI/AAAAAAAAHoM/WprQccy3sz82VHIz5cTmNyK3s-tNNArfgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/3%2BLa%2Bmaison%2Bdes%2Bbois.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Made between Maurice Pialat's first and second features, </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">La maison des bois</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> has long been one of his most scarcely seen works, but this seven-part series made for French TV is clearly one of his greatest masterpieces. A portrait of life in rural France during the First World War, the film is seen through the eyes of Hervé (Hervé Lévy), a young boy from Paris sent to foster parents (the utterly adorable Pierre Doris and Jacqueline Dufranne) while his father is fighting at the front. Much of </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">La maison des bois</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">, particularly the first half of the series, is spent simply watching daily life unfold in this bucolic environment. It feels unforced and casual, but through these beautifully observed episodes we gradually develop a deep emotional connection to these characters, which pays off in the deeply moving later episodes when the First World War – initially a distant spectre – intrudes on this idyllic life. The endings of episodes five, six and seven each had me in tears. Maurice Pialat can be tough viewing, and he’s not somebody I’d recommend to an unsuspecting viewer, but this is one of his most accessible and tender pieces of filmmaking. It's charming and funny from the opening episode onwards, with Pialat's relentless pursuit of authenticity resulting in drama that feels entirely spontaneous and unscripted, and performances that never feel like acting. </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">La maison des bois</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> is an astonishing achievement and one hopes it will eventually receive wider distribution, allowing people to discover another jewel in this singular career.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>2 – Mes Petites Amoureuses&nbsp;(Jean Eustache, 1974) Barbican, 35mm</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-USiarVu3Pxg/XgHssFIqBcI/AAAAAAAAHoI/qUWa_tLhFjU7Nhd00JUIwPreTCSKxenjwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/2%2BMy%2BLittle%2BLoves.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-USiarVu3Pxg/XgHssFIqBcI/AAAAAAAAHoI/qUWa_tLhFjU7Nhd00JUIwPreTCSKxenjwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/2%2BMy%2BLittle%2BLoves.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Having fallen completely in love with Jean Eustache's masterpiece <i>The Mother and the Whore</i> when I first saw it about five years ago, I've been longing for an opportunity to see his second (and sadly final) feature on the big screen. <i>Mes Petites Amoureuses</i>&nbsp;didn't disappoint in the slightest. It's the story of a boy taking his first awkward steps into manhood and leaving school behind to get a different kind of education, one developed through watching and listening, as he attempts to to understand the complicated rituals of teenage romance and sexuality. The film unfolds casually in a series of funny, awkward, empathetic vignettes, each of which is beautifully observed and handled with a deft and perceptive touch by Eustache. Néstor Almendros brings that luminous, Rohmer-esque sunshine to this portrait of a formative summer, and the final scene - showing us how much Daniel has changed - is perfect. I'm very grateful to the Barbican for sourcing this impeccable 35mm print from Eustache's son Boris, and for expertly providing live subtitles. It's an experience that will live long in my memory.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>1 – So This is Paris (Ernst Lubitsch, 1926) - 16mm</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mbFkXEzTZiU/XgHsnzA370I/AAAAAAAAHoE/2Dix9ROm-KUmt0RKSiClR_R2PLJAGYWWACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/1%2BSo%2BThis%2Bis%2BParis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mbFkXEzTZiU/XgHsnzA370I/AAAAAAAAHoE/2Dix9ROm-KUmt0RKSiClR_R2PLJAGYWWACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/1%2BSo%2BThis%2Bis%2BParis.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">The programming of silent films at the Cinema Museum by Michelle Facey has been a constant source of pleasure and illumination throughout 2019, and she excelled herself with this gem, which was presented from Kevin Brownlow's personal 16mm print. </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">So This is Paris</i><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"> is a relatively unknown Lubitsch film, but it's a sublime one. From the opening moments, with the ridiculous 'Dance of Despair', pretty much every scene in this sparkling farce hits the right note. Lubitsch's touch is at its most refined and ingenious here as he sets up the various misunderstandings and deceptions that propel the plot, and he gets perfect performances from his four stars, especially Monte Blue, whose drunken attempt at a seductive wink is particularly priceless. Lubitsch's direction is breathtakingly inventive too, not just in the kaleidoscopic dance sequence, but in his comic staging and use of unexpected visual effects. It's an astonishing film, a major discovery, and the 'moral lesson' that we are left with at the end of the film is the perfect punchline. <i>So This is Paris</i> is prime Lubitsch, so of course it tops my list.</span></div>Philip Concannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072326458695080828noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9811696.post-69976253069574628892019-12-29T23:41:00.001+00:002019-12-29T23:41:27.828+00:00The Best Lead Actresses of 2019<b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">10 - Ana de Armas - Knives Out</span></b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7sVzUz_z61E/Xgk4hOIqZRI/AAAAAAAAHxs/ZeP0ZgpEwxYeHwq850Po6-yxcTXBGme2wCEwYBhgL/s1600/10%2B-%2BAna%2Bde%2BArmas%2B-%2BKnives%2BOut.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7sVzUz_z61E/Xgk4hOIqZRI/AAAAAAAAHxs/ZeP0ZgpEwxYeHwq850Po6-yxcTXBGme2wCEwYBhgL/s400/10%2B-%2BAna%2Bde%2BArmas%2B-%2BKnives%2BOut.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></b></div><br /><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></b><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">9 - Noémie Merlant - Portrait of a Lady on Fire</span></b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9pTr5cM6gJk/Xgk4mJ6gRfI/AAAAAAAAHyI/7kj3ZxRSaG8PQroKzsob3XoOs_AI2mCngCEwYBhgL/s1600/9%2B-%2BNo%25C3%25A9mie%2BMerlant%2B-%2BPortrait%2Bof%2Ba%2BLady%2Bon%2BFire.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9pTr5cM6gJk/Xgk4mJ6gRfI/AAAAAAAAHyI/7kj3ZxRSaG8PQroKzsob3XoOs_AI2mCngCEwYBhgL/s400/9%2B-%2BNo%25C3%25A9mie%2BMerlant%2B-%2BPortrait%2Bof%2Ba%2BLady%2Bon%2BFire.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></b></div><br /><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></b><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">8 - Zhou Dongyu - Better Days</span></b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ly4RphtN6Bc/Xgk4lgqn49I/AAAAAAAAHyE/c2ELR_d8WHQvnd3KDrwVIKQDj8O4GOFEACEwYBhgL/s1600/8%2B-%2BZhou%2BDongyu%2B-%2BBetter%2BDays.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ly4RphtN6Bc/Xgk4lgqn49I/AAAAAAAAHyE/c2ELR_d8WHQvnd3KDrwVIKQDj8O4GOFEACEwYBhgL/s400/8%2B-%2BZhou%2BDongyu%2B-%2BBetter%2BDays.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></b></div><br /><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></b><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">7 - Florence Pugh - Fighting with My Family</span></b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9wLqeQZ1XUQ/Xgk4kcayrSI/AAAAAAAAHyA/ubEzXQfTtl4slm-GLqX2iofsEpQ3r0MdACEwYBhgL/s1600/7%2B-%2BFlorence%2BPugh%2B-%2BFighting%2Bwith%2BMy%2BFamily.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9wLqeQZ1XUQ/Xgk4kcayrSI/AAAAAAAAHyA/ubEzXQfTtl4slm-GLqX2iofsEpQ3r0MdACEwYBhgL/s400/7%2B-%2BFlorence%2BPugh%2B-%2BFighting%2Bwith%2BMy%2BFamily.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></b></div><br /><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></b><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">6 - Honor Swinton Byrne - The Souvenir</span></b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ksi0T76vQEo/Xgk4m7fT_PI/AAAAAAAAHyM/tyeWR5PncRwMuJhGjHfSdffq3oDpRl5gQCEwYBhgL/s1600/6%2B-%2BHonor%2BSwinton%2BByrne%2B-%2BThe%2BSouvenir.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="940" data-original-width="1600" height="235" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ksi0T76vQEo/Xgk4m7fT_PI/AAAAAAAAHyM/tyeWR5PncRwMuJhGjHfSdffq3oDpRl5gQCEwYBhgL/s400/6%2B-%2BHonor%2BSwinton%2BByrne%2B-%2BThe%2BSouvenir.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></b></div><br /><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></b><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">5 - Scarlett Johansson - Marriage Story</span></b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6D8JdhuHow0/Xgk4jQxqUOI/AAAAAAAAHx8/JRGJ413eRfQ6Q-oX_H4rPu4URZitlkwTgCEwYBhgL/s1600/5%2B-%2BScarlett%2BJohansson%2B-%2BMarriage%2BStory.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6D8JdhuHow0/Xgk4jQxqUOI/AAAAAAAAHx8/JRGJ413eRfQ6Q-oX_H4rPu4URZitlkwTgCEwYBhgL/s400/5%2B-%2BScarlett%2BJohansson%2B-%2BMarriage%2BStory.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></b></div><br /><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></b><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">4 - Vitalina Varela - Vitalina Varela</span></b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-s3uLkewYRI4/Xgk4ikgth6I/AAAAAAAAHx0/PEGb94ElU4YtCqPwQQLHrESql8e9iwH0gCEwYBhgL/s1600/4%2B-%2BVitalina%2BVarela%2B-%2BVitalina%2BVarela.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="901" data-original-width="1200" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-s3uLkewYRI4/Xgk4ikgth6I/AAAAAAAAHx0/PEGb94ElU4YtCqPwQQLHrESql8e9iwH0gCEwYBhgL/s400/4%2B-%2BVitalina%2BVarela%2B-%2BVitalina%2BVarela.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></b></div><br /><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></b><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">3 - Lupita Nyongo - Us</span></b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DLGamH7zXew/Xgk4jGLCMaI/AAAAAAAAHyU/XlL9lLZWL5c8NNk1m4dkGFzBUOcgMgIhgCEwYBhgL/s1600/3%2B-%2BLupita%2BNyongo%2B-%2BUs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="1400" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DLGamH7zXew/Xgk4jGLCMaI/AAAAAAAAHyU/XlL9lLZWL5c8NNk1m4dkGFzBUOcgMgIhgCEwYBhgL/s400/3%2B-%2BLupita%2BNyongo%2B-%2BUs.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></b></div><br /><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></b><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">2 - Vasilisa Perelygina - Beanpole</span></b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-q4XSpWYyrgk/Xgk4gsFaJkI/AAAAAAAAHyU/cmGaCVUTDAQf_4ByoYx_56WAedKZhdtjACEwYBhgL/s1600/2%2B-%2BVasilisa%2BPerelygina%2B-%2BBeanpole.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="683" data-original-width="1024" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-q4XSpWYyrgk/Xgk4gsFaJkI/AAAAAAAAHyU/cmGaCVUTDAQf_4ByoYx_56WAedKZhdtjACEwYBhgL/s400/2%2B-%2BVasilisa%2BPerelygina%2B-%2BBeanpole.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></b></div><br /><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></b><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">1 - Virginie Efira - An Impossible Love</span></b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2l54dNyU99Q/Xgk4id9FHFI/AAAAAAAAHyQ/4_jVKxaUfO06Nuh3YUPMwzMMnHL8ql5VQCEwYBhgL/s1600/1%2B-%2BVirginie%2BEfira%2B-%2BAn%2BImpossible%2BLove.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="856" data-original-width="1522" height="223" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2l54dNyU99Q/Xgk4id9FHFI/AAAAAAAAHyQ/4_jVKxaUfO06Nuh3YUPMwzMMnHL8ql5VQCEwYBhgL/s400/1%2B-%2BVirginie%2BEfira%2B-%2BAn%2BImpossible%2BLove.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></b></div>Philip Concannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072326458695080828noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9811696.post-71716967119791277092019-12-29T23:41:00.000+00:002019-12-29T23:41:16.255+00:00The Best Lead Actors of 2019<span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>10 - Bartosz Bielenia - Corpus Christi</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1NFjUTZmTjo/Xgk18Bl4tsI/AAAAAAAAHwc/CyIan6itoyQ549vaWdMNwoXAxJfCg3lrgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/10%2B-%2BBartosz%2BBielenia%2B-%2BCorpus%2BChristi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1NFjUTZmTjo/Xgk18Bl4tsI/AAAAAAAAHwc/CyIan6itoyQ549vaWdMNwoXAxJfCg3lrgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/10%2B-%2BBartosz%2BBielenia%2B-%2BCorpus%2BChristi.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>9 - Edward Rowe - Bait</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Jp2lCLaG7Uo/Xgk2B2UoZQI/AAAAAAAAHwg/vZio_p0hAwY61YlEAzTuWcCGF2MyPYmuwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/9%2B-%2BEdward%2BRowe%2B-%2BBait.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Jp2lCLaG7Uo/Xgk2B2UoZQI/AAAAAAAAHwg/vZio_p0hAwY61YlEAzTuWcCGF2MyPYmuwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/9%2B-%2BEdward%2BRowe%2B-%2BBait.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>8 - Mel Gibson - Dragged Across Concrete</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WvvdrNZOEJA/Xgk2G66FdhI/AAAAAAAAHwk/kS8TuvtG3zI3vHA1RN9aZfIKYzDad6l4ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/8%2B-%2BMel%2BGibson%2B-%2BDragged%2BAcross%2BConcrete.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1068" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WvvdrNZOEJA/Xgk2G66FdhI/AAAAAAAAHwk/kS8TuvtG3zI3vHA1RN9aZfIKYzDad6l4ACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/8%2B-%2BMel%2BGibson%2B-%2BDragged%2BAcross%2BConcrete.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>7 - Carloto Cotta - Diamantino</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5uXRdXO1Ypw/Xgk2Nf0c-BI/AAAAAAAAHwo/zy2U-D906Vcjr4-bqP4XNf_UXav6CLpQwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/7%2B-%2BCarloto%2BCotta%2B-%2BDiamantino.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="787" data-original-width="1400" height="223" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5uXRdXO1Ypw/Xgk2Nf0c-BI/AAAAAAAAHwo/zy2U-D906Vcjr4-bqP4XNf_UXav6CLpQwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/7%2B-%2BCarloto%2BCotta%2B-%2BDiamantino.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>6 - Andrew Garfield - Under the Silver Lake</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ED9Xq-Wt-7A/Xgk2SxVCyFI/AAAAAAAAHww/epnoT_-3uLIr3hRC6lUpHAG1KkllDUpQQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/6%2B-%2BAndrew%2BGarfield%2B-%2BUnder%2Bthe%2BSilver%2BLake.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="869" data-original-width="1180" height="293" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ED9Xq-Wt-7A/Xgk2SxVCyFI/AAAAAAAAHww/epnoT_-3uLIr3hRC6lUpHAG1KkllDUpQQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/6%2B-%2BAndrew%2BGarfield%2B-%2BUnder%2Bthe%2BSilver%2BLake.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>5 - Willem Dafoe - The Lighthouse</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GDswncDcOJU/Xgk2Xw7PQpI/AAAAAAAAHw4/pFQqrAif2hYl6z-KRbXpsRl8uHfrmtZwACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/5%2B-%2BWillem%2BDafoe%2B-%2BThe%2BLighthouse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="676" data-original-width="1200" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GDswncDcOJU/Xgk2Xw7PQpI/AAAAAAAAHw4/pFQqrAif2hYl6z-KRbXpsRl8uHfrmtZwACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/5%2B-%2BWillem%2BDafoe%2B-%2BThe%2BLighthouse.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>4 - Brad Pitt - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7LNkmlmBKpA/Xgk2gW0oA5I/AAAAAAAAHxA/JV4pyAoInZ0wpzESmE8YPC4sBDzN9tWmwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/4%2B-%2BBrad%2BPitt%2B-%2BOnce%2BUpon%2Ba%2BTime%2Bin%2BHollywood.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7LNkmlmBKpA/Xgk2gW0oA5I/AAAAAAAAHxA/JV4pyAoInZ0wpzESmE8YPC4sBDzN9tWmwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/4%2B-%2BBrad%2BPitt%2B-%2BOnce%2BUpon%2Ba%2BTime%2Bin%2BHollywood.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>3 - Paul Walter Hauser - Richard Jewell</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MFxrhtq8Jj4/Xgk2qGxky4I/AAAAAAAAHxI/xFTFRFoYw3klrxZWmMPsTQ23hlIo_svcACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/3%2B-%2BPaul%2BWalter%2BHauser%2B-%2BRichard%2BJewell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="696" data-original-width="1168" height="237" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MFxrhtq8Jj4/Xgk2qGxky4I/AAAAAAAAHxI/xFTFRFoYw3klrxZWmMPsTQ23hlIo_svcACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/3%2B-%2BPaul%2BWalter%2BHauser%2B-%2BRichard%2BJewell.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>2 - Adam Sandler - Uncut Gems</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-J_4Axw-UpaE/Xgk21YChJ_I/AAAAAAAAHxQ/6yzbkTFnyT0r0EW4hBYUJnMaNnAAbeazACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/2%2B-%2BAdam%2BSandler%2B-%2BUncut%2BGems.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="799" data-original-width="1237" height="257" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-J_4Axw-UpaE/Xgk21YChJ_I/AAAAAAAAHxQ/6yzbkTFnyT0r0EW4hBYUJnMaNnAAbeazACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/2%2B-%2BAdam%2BSandler%2B-%2BUncut%2BGems.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>1 - Robert De Niro - The Irishman</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Sr8OYZJBzvQ/Xgk28ghnubI/AAAAAAAAHxY/aoje1bGbkeAbStSnq0oseNUk0AH_uv3qACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/1%2B-%2BRobert%2BDe%2BNiro%2B-%2BThe%2BIrishman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Sr8OYZJBzvQ/Xgk28ghnubI/AAAAAAAAHxY/aoje1bGbkeAbStSnq0oseNUk0AH_uv3qACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/1%2B-%2BRobert%2BDe%2BNiro%2B-%2BThe%2BIrishman.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div>Philip Concannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072326458695080828noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9811696.post-44945915540851044602019-12-29T23:40:00.002+00:002019-12-29T23:40:49.719+00:00The Best Supporting Actresses of 2019<span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>10 - Zhao Shuzhen - The Farewell</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IxMmXdutk30/XgkyDvNMqnI/AAAAAAAAHvE/yG1yH6iFgckyN5VCPngWbu37YF--f5cPACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/10%2B-%2BZhao%2BShuzhen%2B-%2BThe%2BFarewell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="681" data-original-width="1024" height="265" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IxMmXdutk30/XgkyDvNMqnI/AAAAAAAAHvE/yG1yH6iFgckyN5VCPngWbu37YF--f5cPACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/10%2B-%2BZhao%2BShuzhen%2B-%2BThe%2BFarewell.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>9 - Chloe Endean - Bait</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-k8hoJ_RB6Ls/XgkyJfCQIcI/AAAAAAAAHvI/d-q8snmIY98YKpsgIHm463NWJK9-5O9ZgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/9%2B-%2BChloe%2BEndean%2B-%2BBait.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1200" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-k8hoJ_RB6Ls/XgkyJfCQIcI/AAAAAAAAHvI/d-q8snmIY98YKpsgIHm463NWJK9-5O9ZgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/9%2B-%2BChloe%2BEndean%2B-%2BBait.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>8 - Cho Yeo-jeong - Parasite</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TiLk7P3BN_w/XgkyOcv0PQI/AAAAAAAAHvM/VigTR6VqbXgn1Q-ERovjS5mdQlwKxirRACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/8%2B-%2BCho%2BYeo-jeong%2B-%2BParasite.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1500" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TiLk7P3BN_w/XgkyOcv0PQI/AAAAAAAAHvM/VigTR6VqbXgn1Q-ERovjS5mdQlwKxirRACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/8%2B-%2BCho%2BYeo-jeong%2B-%2BParasite.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>7 - Elle Fanning - A Rainy Day in New York</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KPXK8Owp6ls/XgkyTTk-LkI/AAAAAAAAHvQ/suFz70n9dJE6xafqldCKO1AZHVzhsUPjACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/7%2B-%2BElle%2BFanning%2B-%2BA%2BRainy%2BDay%2Bin%2BNew%2BYork.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="907" data-original-width="1360" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KPXK8Owp6ls/XgkyTTk-LkI/AAAAAAAAHvQ/suFz70n9dJE6xafqldCKO1AZHVzhsUPjACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/7%2B-%2BElle%2BFanning%2B-%2BA%2BRainy%2BDay%2Bin%2BNew%2BYork.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>6 - Margot Robbie - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-44D4oYWepkE/XgkyYgaQqDI/AAAAAAAAHvY/50yD1qvzOB8yv8VaR4jg9f7Ml6yp3ljyACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/6%2B-%2BMargot%2BRobbie%2B-%2BOnce%2BUpon%2Ba%2BTime%2Bin%2BHollywood.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-44D4oYWepkE/XgkyYgaQqDI/AAAAAAAAHvY/50yD1qvzOB8yv8VaR4jg9f7Ml6yp3ljyACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/6%2B-%2BMargot%2BRobbie%2B-%2BOnce%2BUpon%2Ba%2BTime%2Bin%2BHollywood.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>5 - Sara Forestier - Oh Mercy</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-abrjFI9BaDA/Xgk0TiN5m4I/AAAAAAAAHvw/iFEFuqvXWyoZeDFzSPA-yKIoHzl48QNcgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/5%2B-%2BSara%2BForestier%2B-%2BOh%2BMercy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1069" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-abrjFI9BaDA/Xgk0TiN5m4I/AAAAAAAAHvw/iFEFuqvXWyoZeDFzSPA-yKIoHzl48QNcgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/5%2B-%2BSara%2BForestier%2B-%2BOh%2BMercy.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><span id="goog_896189841"></span><span id="goog_896189842"></span></b></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>4 - Da'Vine Joy Randolph - Dolemite Is My Name</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YyiSNlGKUWg/Xgk0askRf9I/AAAAAAAAHv0/5MEvHqDtNXwTrIWUvLT-SrMltI-3wiOFgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/4%2B-%2BDa%2527Vine%2BJoy%2BRandolph%2B-%2BDolemite%2BIs%2BMy%2BName.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YyiSNlGKUWg/Xgk0askRf9I/AAAAAAAAHv0/5MEvHqDtNXwTrIWUvLT-SrMltI-3wiOFgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/4%2B-%2BDa%2527Vine%2BJoy%2BRandolph%2B-%2BDolemite%2BIs%2BMy%2BName.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>3 - Estelle Lecure - An Impossible Love</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SWhsLc5wxhk/Xgk0is6So4I/AAAAAAAAHv4/WtvwTh4Cy_Y44umcAwCbl4ib314s2VJOACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/3%2B-%2BEstelle%2BLecure%2B-%2BAn%2BImpossible%2BLove.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="523" data-original-width="1027" height="202" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SWhsLc5wxhk/Xgk0is6So4I/AAAAAAAAHv4/WtvwTh4Cy_Y44umcAwCbl4ib314s2VJOACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/3%2B-%2BEstelle%2BLecure%2B-%2BAn%2BImpossible%2BLove.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>2 - Julia Fox - Uncut Gems</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-a5dCoeGkRWU/Xgk0pXtU2vI/AAAAAAAAHwA/USscFQ-4hlEh8uJfNAxLMqe8nqv3TuN3gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/2%2B-%2BJulia%2BFox%2B-%2BUncut%2BGems.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="563" data-original-width="1000" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-a5dCoeGkRWU/Xgk0pXtU2vI/AAAAAAAAHwA/USscFQ-4hlEh8uJfNAxLMqe8nqv3TuN3gCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/2%2B-%2BJulia%2BFox%2B-%2BUncut%2BGems.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>1 - Kseniya Kutepova - Beanpole</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h7kz-9GIVg8/Xgk0vYywEvI/AAAAAAAAHwI/E4MR8pd6_FYFpAXRKWAAtAglVBIVf133ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/1%2B-%2BKseniya%2BKutepova%2B-%2BBeanpole.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1600" height="191" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h7kz-9GIVg8/Xgk0vYywEvI/AAAAAAAAHwI/E4MR8pd6_FYFpAXRKWAAtAglVBIVf133ACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/1%2B-%2BKseniya%2BKutepova%2B-%2BBeanpole.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div>Philip Concannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072326458695080828noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9811696.post-67058187875626959662019-12-29T23:40:00.001+00:002019-12-29T23:40:38.344+00:00The Best Supporting Actors of 2019<span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>10 - Alec Baldwin - Motherless Brooklyn</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EEUlu2C-55g/Xgkv9ByZQvI/AAAAAAAAHt4/x295dqgR-skpfscR1ovpgia1Fm1lNtCZwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/10%2B-%2BAlec%2BBaldwin%2B-%2BMotherless%2BBrooklyn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="840" data-original-width="1600" height="210" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EEUlu2C-55g/Xgkv9ByZQvI/AAAAAAAAHt4/x295dqgR-skpfscR1ovpgia1Fm1lNtCZwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/10%2B-%2BAlec%2BBaldwin%2B-%2BMotherless%2BBrooklyn.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>9 - Charles Dance - Fanny Lye Deliver'd</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0t6dIID8-MU/XgkwCbCLNKI/AAAAAAAAHt8/iNpIYi7Y3qc-eL5bzgNj5gcEXAoihfjDwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/9%2B-%2BCharles%2BDance%2B-%2BFanny%2BLye%2BDeliver%2527d.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="252" data-original-width="600" height="167" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0t6dIID8-MU/XgkwCbCLNKI/AAAAAAAAHt8/iNpIYi7Y3qc-eL5bzgNj5gcEXAoihfjDwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/9%2B-%2BCharles%2BDance%2B-%2BFanny%2BLye%2BDeliver%2527d.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>8 - Sterling K. Brown - Waves</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xdvqJqTRiw8/XgkwHYy9VGI/AAAAAAAAHuA/44YNabXoU5QI_hPcV-NpRvX2z5TZfjGIQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/8%2B-%2BSterling%2BK.%2BBrown%2B-%2BWaves.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xdvqJqTRiw8/XgkwHYy9VGI/AAAAAAAAHuA/44YNabXoU5QI_hPcV-NpRvX2z5TZfjGIQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/8%2B-%2BSterling%2BK.%2BBrown%2B-%2BWaves.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>7 - Alfredo Castro - Rojo</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mgwTdfXrIwE/XgkwM3uC8MI/AAAAAAAAHuE/qX1XanN8jkAjfLBWJDd1FzvTQgGR6xUCQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/7%2B-%2BAlfredo%2BCastro%2B-%2BRojo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="670" data-original-width="1600" height="167" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mgwTdfXrIwE/XgkwM3uC8MI/AAAAAAAAHuE/qX1XanN8jkAjfLBWJDd1FzvTQgGR6xUCQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/7%2B-%2BAlfredo%2BCastro%2B-%2BRojo.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>6 - Swann Arlaud - By the Grace of God</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Rj27GmcXjcY/XgkwWGuYzzI/AAAAAAAAHuQ/7hPh_U2cA3Qfz_goUyatbD-tme45Z7IrQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/6%2B-%2BSwann%2BArlaud%2B-%2BBy%2Bthe%2BGrace%2Bof%2BGod.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1600" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Rj27GmcXjcY/XgkwWGuYzzI/AAAAAAAAHuQ/7hPh_U2cA3Qfz_goUyatbD-tme45Z7IrQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/6%2B-%2BSwann%2BArlaud%2B-%2BBy%2Bthe%2BGrace%2Bof%2BGod.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>5 - Wesley Snipes - Dolemite Is My Name</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-C-ESZOMNwMw/XgkwbFg-71I/AAAAAAAAHuY/mHZCtaI6UDg5M7jv4XkLhWdWbjxQaasiwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/5%2B-%2BWesley%2BSnipes%2B-%2BDolemite%2BIs%2BMy%2BName.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="1280" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-C-ESZOMNwMw/XgkwbFg-71I/AAAAAAAAHuY/mHZCtaI6UDg5M7jv4XkLhWdWbjxQaasiwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/5%2B-%2BWesley%2BSnipes%2B-%2BDolemite%2BIs%2BMy%2BName.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>4 - Martin Lawrence - The Beach Bum</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8SforAtQiLU/Xgkwg_uk-8I/AAAAAAAAHug/NuwpW71-gggF8NYXvMsDWt1jRCizexpYwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/4%2B-%2BMartin%2BLawrence%2B-%2BThe%2BBeach%2BBum.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="375" data-original-width="750" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8SforAtQiLU/Xgkwg_uk-8I/AAAAAAAAHug/NuwpW71-gggF8NYXvMsDWt1jRCizexpYwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/4%2B-%2BMartin%2BLawrence%2B-%2BThe%2BBeach%2BBum.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>3 - Craig Fairbrass - Muscle</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w_EehFJLi_8/XgkwmAqDm6I/AAAAAAAAHuk/qGCCC0TxlvU8svY5xr3rB5on__3sI49iACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/3%2B-%2BCraig%2BFairbrass%2B-%2BMuscle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="563" data-original-width="1000" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w_EehFJLi_8/XgkwmAqDm6I/AAAAAAAAHuk/qGCCC0TxlvU8svY5xr3rB5on__3sI49iACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/3%2B-%2BCraig%2BFairbrass%2B-%2BMuscle.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>2 - Sam Rockwell - Richard Jewell</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TDCIL12tqhs/Xgkwqnp96xI/AAAAAAAAHuo/UbjjbnUWGvgOVUD8wqAz96A3SxgymR8XACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/2%2B-%2BSam%2BRockwell%2B-%2BRichard%2BJewell%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="933" data-original-width="1400" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TDCIL12tqhs/Xgkwqnp96xI/AAAAAAAAHuo/UbjjbnUWGvgOVUD8wqAz96A3SxgymR8XACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/2%2B-%2BSam%2BRockwell%2B-%2BRichard%2BJewell%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>1 - Joe Pesci - The Irishman</b></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6gjkfGaF0yc/XgkwvIwDvcI/AAAAAAAAHuw/m4RFq8gJtkMg81grq5ZWRB6t2gLYXpIHwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/1%2B-%2BJoe%2BPesci%2B-%2BThe%2BIrishman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="437" data-original-width="780" height="223" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6gjkfGaF0yc/XgkwvIwDvcI/AAAAAAAAHuw/m4RFq8gJtkMg81grq5ZWRB6t2gLYXpIHwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/1%2B-%2BJoe%2BPesci%2B-%2BThe%2BIrishman.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div>Philip Concannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072326458695080828noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9811696.post-19519241996077615402019-11-26T14:59:00.000+00:002019-11-26T14:59:33.961+00:00West Indies<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WURYfAUcnb4/Xd09a6d8CLI/AAAAAAAAHl0/SPo0gVz4w4I5uBGzp8JpmWn1azdoeWi2gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/west-indies-1979-004-performance.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WURYfAUcnb4/Xd09a6d8CLI/AAAAAAAAHl0/SPo0gVz4w4I5uBGzp8JpmWn1azdoeWi2gCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/west-indies-1979-004-performance.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In his 1979 essay ‘What Is the Cinema for Us?’ the great Mauritian filmmaker Med Hondo argued for the importance of films made by and for the African and Arab diasporas habitually excluded by the mainstream, and how they might be freed from the monopolies of American and European filmmaking to grow into a thriving independent national cinema.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Throughout the world,” he wrote, “when people use the term cinema, they all refer more or less consciously to a single cinema, which for more than half a century has been created, produced, industrialised, programmed and then shown on the world’s screens: Euro-American cinema.”</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This desire for cinematic liberation was an abiding concern throughout Hondo’s career, notably in his experimental and provocative film <i>Les Bicots-Nègres vos voisins</i> (1974). In the same year that he wrote this essay, Hondo made his most audacious attempt to beat Hollywood at its own game with his extraordinary musical <i>West Indies</i>. “I wanted to free the very concept of musical comedy from its American trade mark,” he said. “I wanted to show that each people on earth has its own musical comedy, its own musical tragedy and its own thought shaped through its own history.”</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i><a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/west-indies-med-hondo">Read the rest of my article here</a></i></span>Philip Concannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072326458695080828noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9811696.post-6468998143990859182019-11-11T09:49:00.001+00:002019-11-11T09:49:50.299+00:00Luce<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TMw9eFRRrmc/XckufXJnqaI/AAAAAAAAHks/jbw30pFplJgqr7IiyMTHtw1YVEVKG770wCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/luce-2019-001-octavia-spencer-kelvin-harrison-jr-naomi-watts.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="562" data-original-width="1000" height="223" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TMw9eFRRrmc/XckufXJnqaI/AAAAAAAAHks/jbw30pFplJgqr7IiyMTHtw1YVEVKG770wCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/luce-2019-001-octavia-spencer-kelvin-harrison-jr-naomi-watts.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“I just wanted a normal family,” Peter (Tim Roth) tells his wife Amy (Naomi Watts) towards the end of <i>Luce</i>. “Our lives didn’t have to be a political fucking statement.” Unfortunately for Peter, <i>Luce </i>is the kind of movie where everyone’s life is a political statement. Julius Onah’s film tackles questions of prejudice, privilege, code-switching, sex and race in 21st-century America, and the characters spend much of the running time declaiming the script’s themes at each other in lieu of having genuine conversations. <i>Luce </i>was adapted from the 2013 play by J.C. Lee, who co-wrote the screenplay with Onah, and the pair can’t disguise its stage origins, though there are enough intriguing hooks here to pull viewers in.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><i><a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/reviews-recommendations/luce-julius-onah-eritrean-teenager-adopted"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Read the rest of my view at the BFI</span></a></i>Philip Concannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072326458695080828noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9811696.post-72550197944853086702019-11-08T10:12:00.001+00:002019-11-08T15:37:29.238+00:00The Irishman<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UJpPTB7SDeU/XcU9Bm4gC_I/AAAAAAAAHkc/YCrtHS5BpUkvUwjdrMpSXWhrzc8-sli9wCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/irishman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UJpPTB7SDeU/XcU9Bm4gC_I/AAAAAAAAHkc/YCrtHS5BpUkvUwjdrMpSXWhrzc8-sli9wCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/irishman.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">“As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster” Henry Hill states at the start of <i>Goodfellas</i>. “To me being a gangster was better than being president of the United States.” Martin Scorsese has often shown us the seductive glamour of a life of crime; the wealth, the status, the power that draws his characters to it like a moth to a flame. One of the most iconic sequences in his work is the tracking shot in <i>Goodfellas </i>that follows Henry and Karen as they are led through the back entrance of The Copacabana to be seated at a prime table while all the schnooks wait in line. Scorsese played a similar game in <i>Casino</i>, dazzling us as his camera weaves through the backrooms where an unimaginable amount of cash flows daily, much of it into the counters' pockets. Both of these films end with violence and death, but before the crash, Scorsese invites us feel the vicarious thrill of the criminal lifestyle, allowing us to understand these men through the lives they've chosen to lead.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><i>The Irishman</i> is a different proposition from the start. There's little glamour here, the style is restrained and the environments are more mundane. The film may begin with a trademark Scorsese tracking shot, but the location we’re gliding through on this occasion is a nursing home, which is the place where the film begins and ends. It slowly makes its way through the corridors until it settles on Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), who then tells us his story over the course of the next three and a half hours. Steven Zaillian's screenplay is structured like an old man's memories, drifting back and forth in time, from one anecdote to the next, until it coalesces in its final hour into a staggeringly moving portrayal of grief and guilt, but despite the length and the measured pacing, <i>The Irishman</i> never drags. Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker are in complete command of this material, and there's hardly a moment that isn't captivating.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">This is a film about a tumultuous period in American history with The Bay of Pigs, the Kennedy assassination, Watergate and more unfolds in the background, and with Jimmy Hoffa (</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">brought to life with ferocious and hilarious bluster by Al Pacino)</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">&nbsp;being a key figure, but at its heart, it's a story about friendship and betrayal. The spine of the film is a road trip taken by Sheeran and crime boss Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) as they travel to a wedding in 1975, making stops along the way so Bufalino can settle some business and Sheeran can reminisce. The road is dotted with markers, like the truck stop where he and Bufalino first met, some time before the older man took Sheeran under his wing and drew him into his criminal network as a loyal soldier. In Pesci's previous collaborations with Scorsese, the actor has played livewire characters with hair-trigger tempers; from the minute he appears we await his foul-mouthed, violent outbursts with trepidation. His Russell Bufalino is a different beast, and even more chilling. Watchful and quietly authoritative, he never loses his temper and never raises his voice. He's this film's equivalent of "Paulie might have moved slow, but it was only because Paulie didn't have to move for anybody," and he's a man who can pass a death sentence as easily as uttering the simple words “It's what it is.” One telling detail is the wariness Frank's daughter Peggy (played as a child by Lucy Gallina and later by Anna Paquin) exhibits towards this family friend. She can see the bottomless darkness behind his avuncular facade.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Peggy has no such qualms with Hoffa, seeing him as both a kindle uncle with whom she can share an ice cream, and an inspiring figure, fighting for a better deal for the working man. Although <i>The Irishman</i> is very much a film about men, Peggy quietly emerges as a key figure for giving us a different perspective on Frank. From the moment she sees her father beat a man in the street as a young child, Peggy acts as a silent witness throughout the film. She watches him leave the house at strange hours, she sees the kind of company he keeps, she reads about brutal slayings in the news and connects the dots. It might seem strange that an actress of Anna Paquin’s calibre has been handed a background role with no dialogue, but her silence is what lends the role its enormous power, and when she does finally speak her few words they cut Sheeran to the core. Her simple act of asking “Why?” is the moment when <i>The Irishman</i> shifts gears and delves deeper into questions of death, sin and mortality than Scorsese has ever gone before.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Throughout <i>The Irishman</i>, minor characters are introduced with title cards, detailing the date and method of their death – “shot four times in the face in his kitchen” or “blown up by a nail bomb under his porch.” They are already dead men when we meet them, and this is ultimately a film about confronting the inevitable, however it comes. Most of the men who choose this way of life get gunned down, blown up or meet their end in some similarly grisly fashion, but those who don’t end up wasting away in prisons; once-intimidating figures now physically and mentally diminished. I can’t stop thinking about one particular gesture in this film, a palsied hand raised as an elderly character says “You’ll see…you’ll see…” before being wheeled out of the film for good. The climactic forty minutes of <i>The Irishman</i> are as pitiless a study of ageing as you’re likely to see, with every scene being marked by death and the lingering weight of a failure to make amends for past misdeeds.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">It’s in this final hour that Robert De Niro does his best work in the film; in fact, it’s hard to recall the last time he gave a performance this rich, nuanced and powerful. For much of the film De Niro seems willing to act as a quiet anchor for this epic; a self-effacing straight man for more attention-grabbing turns from the likes of Pacino, Pesci, Stephen Graham (wonderfully pugnacious, sharing two killer scenes with Pacino) and Ray Romano. But as the film moves into its closing stages, and these figures start to disappear from Sheeran’s life, De Niro’s performance as a man haunted by guilt and regret is revealed as a monumental piece of work. At times, the tormented emotions inside him seem to leave him incapable of speech, the words haltingly stumbling out of his mouth in one gut-wrenching scene as he attempts to make a phone call.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">This is every inch a Martin Scorsese picture, a true late-career masterpiece, but perhaps we should regard De Niro as a co-auteur on the film, a driving force in the same way he was with <i>Raging Bull</i>. It was him, after all, who brought the material to his longtime friend and collaborator in the first place, and it’s tempting to view <i>The Irishman</i> as their <i>Unforgiven</i>; a melancholy reflection and recontextualization of their previous work together in this genre, which has now spanned more than 45 years. From the young punks of <i>Mean Streets</i>, through the flashy and ruthless gangsters of <i>Goodfellas </i>and <i>Casino</i>, to the weary old men of <i>The Irishman</i>; it’s a Four Seasons-like quartet that explores propulsive thrill and ultimate emptiness of criminal life with a staggering clarity and force, with the sobering and haunting ending to this film feeling like a perfect final statement. We leave Frank where we found him, in the nursing home, but this time it’s after hours. He has nobody to comfort him, nobody to hear his stories, nobody who remembers the men who defined his life. He can do nothing but sit and get lost in his still-painful memories while he waits for the end, all alone in the still of the night.</span><br /><div><br /></div>Philip Concannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072326458695080828noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9811696.post-56730764556636994362019-11-01T10:33:00.000+00:002019-11-01T10:33:04.250+00:00Sight & Sound December 2019<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5dw7_vODlb4/XbwJoM6VmhI/AAAAAAAAHjo/hCcoZ0iG-Mo_IbARjd25QPzyVAGzm95mACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/SS%2B12-19.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="898" data-original-width="685" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5dw7_vODlb4/XbwJoM6VmhI/AAAAAAAAHjo/hCcoZ0iG-Mo_IbARjd25QPzyVAGzm95mACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/SS%2B12-19.JPG" width="305" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the new Sight &amp; Sound, I wrote about two films that made their UK debut at the London Film Festival recently. Wash Westmoreland's <i>Earthquake Bird</i> is a mildly engaging but ultimately underwhelming thriller that will be released in UK cinemas on November 1st, before landing on Netflix a few weeks later.&nbsp;Julius Onah's <i>Luce </i>is a provocative thriller with a terrific cast, and it arrives in UK cinemas on November 8th. You can read my full reviews in the December issue of Sight &amp; Sound, which is on sale now.</span>Philip Concannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072326458695080828noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9811696.post-33949246261618301292019-10-28T13:30:00.000+00:002019-10-28T13:30:28.657+00:00Muscle<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5dVFY33frGk/Xbbs2ugxJeI/AAAAAAAAHi0/im6YLagFZmIDUqIfH7iukBtlgQAP9dGbACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/muscle-2019-002-cavan-clarkin-head-bowed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="417" data-original-width="1000" height="166" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5dVFY33frGk/Xbbs2ugxJeI/AAAAAAAAHi0/im6YLagFZmIDUqIfH7iukBtlgQAP9dGbACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/muscle-2019-002-cavan-clarkin-head-bowed.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Stuck in a depressing telesales job, spending every night in the pub, and slowly drifting apart from his frustrated girlfriend, Simon (Cavan Clerkin) is a man in dire need of a change. “You’re happy to moan and groan instead of changing things. You’re pathetic,” his girlfriend Sarah (Polly Maberly) complains, which might be what prompts Simon to walk into the Atlantis gym on a whim one afternoon, paying up front for a six-month membership in the hope of getting fit.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Fuck fit. You want to get big, and you want to get strong” is the no-nonsense advice he receives from Terry (Craig Fairbrass), the personal trainer who takes Simon under his wing and is as good as his word, transforming the tubby Simon into a burly, bearded beast. But Terry’s influence over his new friend won’t end there.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The song <i>Mister, You’re a Better Man Than I</i> over the opening credits sets the tone. <i>Muscle </i>is a film about the gap between the man Simon is and the man he thinks he should be, and Gerard Johnson’s third feature is a welcome change of pace after the stylish but hollow violence of <i>Hyena </i>(2014). <i>Muscle </i>is a twisted black comedy exploring questions of masculinity and insecurity, with echoes of <i>Fight Club</i> (1999) in the central relationship, as alpha-male Terry takes over and destroys Simon’s life and his sense of self.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i><a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/reviews-recommendations/muscle-gerard-johnson-craig-fairbrass-cavan-clerkin-self-improvement-personal-trainer-black-comedy">Read the rest of my review on the BFI website</a></i></span>Philip Concannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072326458695080828noreply@blogger.com